


Boot Theory

by Wikiaddicted723



Series: Boot Theory [1]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Fringe, Twin Peaks
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, M/M, please ignore the ridiculous tags, the author is in a weird place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 60,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October

It’s two in the morning when the phone rings.

Olivia rolls towards the sound out of habit, hand outstretched and looking for her nightstand, still half-asleep. Instead, she finds empty space. Her eyes snap open.

Right. Not her place.

Silently, she pushes herself up, swings her legs over the side of the mattress, guarding against the creak of the springs underneath. Olivia hates this bed, the old mattress and unsteady frame, but the only alternative is hers. It will have to do. She brings the thin sheets with her, guarding against the chill of the air as it freezes the night’s sweat.

Streetlight filters through the half-closed blinds, recreating the shapes of the apartment around her from scratch. It’s quiet outside, not a wailing siren, not a car. The phone was left forgotten with her pants, beside the beer bottles and the woolen scarves. It’s easy to find. “Dunham.”

There’s a familiar snicker on the other end of the line. “And good morning to you, too, Deputy.”

The man in the bed grumbles at her absence , chest bare without the sheets and shivering, missing the heat of her against his back. He looks younger with his eyes closed, his brow relaxed, the lines around his eyes turned suggestions of laughter in the dark. “This better be good, Charlie.”

“For a certain definition of good. Patrol found another body by the shore a couple hours ago, same as the others.”

Olivia sighs. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

“See you then.” Charlie hangs up. He’s always been efficient and to the point, both on the phone and off. She slides a hand through her hair, lets herself sit in the silence for a while.

The pale gold on her finger glints in what little light the blinds let in. It's lost its meaning. Now, it’s a reminder of suspicions and outright lies, broken promises from both sides. Still, she wears it everywhere. Peter doesn’t seem to mind.

She’s sliding into her underwear when he wakes up behind her, and it’s a good thing—she hates having to wake him up. A warm hand lands softly on her back, solid, and she turns to look at him over her shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he says, voice thick with sleep. “Work?” His hand slides up, then down, over her arm. She doesn’t bother suppressing the shiver. It’s not like he doesn’t already know exactly what his touch does.

“Yeah, body. By the lake. Get dressed.” She moves away before the twenty minute promise flies out the window with the next slide of his hand.

Her smart phone screen announces the time and date when she turns it on. Two twenty six a.m. October twelfth.

Happy Fucking Birthday.

 

***

 

The shore is illuminated. There’s a police car blocking the bridge with its headlights on, a few spot lights set up for officers to comb through the scene for anything the first patrol might have missed. There’s only five people here, not counting the dead man, but it seems a crowd for this small town.  

Olivia crouches, Sheriff Francis standing beside her and the bloated corpse that drove her here cold on the ground. She turns it face-up with gloved hands, tries not to grimace.  Opens its mouth and looks inside with her pen light. _Bingo._ “What’s this? The third? Fourth body?”

“Third,” Charlie says, hands on his belt, warm breath turned to fog in the night air.

“In five months.”

“Yeah.”

Olivia stands up slowly, dusts her jeans, feeling the strain on her knees from holding the crouch for a while. “So, what are you thinking? Serial killer?” She makes sure her voice carries over to the others. It would not do to have them question the oddities of the case just yet, if ever.

“I’m thinking you’re too clearheaded to be awake this early. How much coffee did you chug in that ten minute drive?” He yawns.

“You’re just getting old, Charlie.” She pats his back.

Charlie huffs, rolls his eyes. He motions with his head towards the yellow tape of the police line. “How’s King coming along?”

Olivia turns to look at the subject in question, pacing the cold away by the car while he waits for her. Astrid has joined him, oversized camera still in her hands as they chat. “He’s alright. Learns fast. Doesn’t give a shit about protocol as far as I can tell, but I can work with that.”

“Of course you can.” Charlie says, an amused glint in his eyes. She doesn’t give a shit about protocol either, never has.

“How’s Sonia doing?”

The rare dumb grin on his face can only get wider. They’ve been trying for children for some time now. “She’s great. Little one’s kicking already.”

Olivia returns his smile and hopes he doesn’t notice the wistful twist of her mouth. She’s been there, done that. Evidently, it didn’t pan out. There are things in life that some people are not meant for, regardless of desire. “You know the sex yet?”

“No, Sonia said she’d rather be surprised.”

Olivia raises both her eyebrows. “And you’re okay with that?”  

Charlie shrugs. “Can’t argue with a pregnant woman, Liv."

“Ah. Smart man.”

“Right, well,” he sighs, turning to survey the crime scene one more time. “This smart man is going to leave the rotting corpse in your more than capable hands and go keep his pregnant wife warm. Bag it, tag it, get it to Stanton as soon as you can.”

“I know how to do my job, Francis,” she says to his retreating back.

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

***

 

The breakfast crowd at Mabel's must be a mathematical constant of some kind, like gravity, or the speed of light.

Rachel had decided against changing anything about the diner when she bought it a few winters back, after Mabel died, and if business prosperity is any indicator the choice was wise. They’ve been open for forty minutes and the trickle of patrons sleepily wading in has yet to stop.

Outside the diner, the sun shines with the dull October glow of an energy efficient light bulb behind frosted glass. The even coat of rainfall over the town square reflects the light with the lazy quality of mornings best spent on pillows and under quilts, while storefronts slowly come to life.

Peter drops his jacket and scarf across from her on the worn booth, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I’m gonna go check on Walter.”

“Sure,” Olivia says. As an afterthought: “you want me to order for you?”

“Um, yeah. Eggs and bacon?” He turns back after a couple of steps in the kitchen’s direction. “And toast, if they still have some of that blackberry jam. And coffee—a lot of coffee.”

“Of course.” Olivia watches him retreat towards the kitchen, back straight and tense, like he’s ready to walk into a fight. That particular assessment is probably not very far off mark.

The Kings make an odd pair: mercurial, incredibly smart and forever at odds with one another. From what Peter’s let slip through his carefully crafted exterior, going crazy actually made Walter a better man than he was. There’s an old anger between them, a deep seated resentment owing to more than a parent’s absence, and Olivia wonders if the old Walter was familiar with the concept of abuse.

With gritted teeth, she thinks he wouldn’t be the first parent in the world to take it out on his kid. He’ll certainly not be the last.

The waitress comes over with the food and the coffee before Peter makes it back, and when he does, he slides into the booth with a weary sigh and a frown. It doesn’t look like he’ll speak, or move, or do anything other than sit moodily in place like a despondent schoolboy, and Olivia was having a bad day before the sun was even up. She sets her coffee cup down and leans back.

She’s about to stand and survey the damage with her own eyes when he finally speaks. “I wouldn’t go in the kitchen if I were you.”

“What did Walter do now?”

King and Son have only been in town for a little over the half-year mark, but most of the diner’s patrons are already familiar with the older man’s particular flair of eccentricity (madness). According to Rachel, the only reason he’s managed to keep the job through it all is that his cooking just keeps getting better.

That, and Friday Night’s Mystery Pie, served free of charge to people too wasted to actually taste it, or some brave soul looking for a free breakfast in exchange for eating a whole slice. Someone, maybe Frank, had come up with that to get rid of the pies piling up over the counter. Rumor has it they’re either bliss or a catastrophe. Either way, it’s been a hit.

Peter grabs the coffee pot, pours himself a second cup and adds some milk. He stirs. “Walter is, and I quote, “trying to recreate the perfect strawberry milkshake” in between food orders, which he apparently invented sometime around ’72. He has also significantly depleted the dairy in the diner’s fridge in the interest of the project, and did I mention he’s high?”

“He’s _what?”_

He takes a sip. “High as a fucking kite. Apparently he needs to mimic the conditions he was in when he put together the recipe the first time, in order to stimulate his brain into actually remembering, and, of course, those conditions include copious amounts of homegrown marijuana—for which he assured me he has a prescription, by the way—and the breeze. That’s the short version, would you like to hear more?”

“Uh, no, thanks, I think I’ve heard enough. Does this happen often?”

“You have no idea.”

Conversation becomes intermittent, turned to matters they’re both comfortable discussing and Olivia alternates between listening, watching him eat, and looking without seeing at the people walking outside the stenciled window.

The cheque comes when he’s done, and with it her sister and niece, who holds a frosted cupcake complete with burning candle in front of her, with a sweet dimpled grin. “Happy Birthday, Aunt Liv!”

Olivia smiles and takes the cupcake reverently with one hand, reaches for her niece with the other, hugging the girl to her firmly and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Thank you, baby girl, I really wanted one of these.”

“Blow the candle, Aunt Liv! You have to blow it or you can’t make a wish.”

She chuckles. “Is that how it works now?”

Ella nods vigorously, and Olivia raises her eyes to her sister’s. Rachel’s got that patient mother look pasted on but it doesn’t fool the older sister for a minute. This ambush was a two person scheme, she’d bet her badge on it. “Well then, how about we blow it together? That way each of us gets a wish. What do you think?”

“Really?” Ella says with an earnest face.

“Really.”

They blow the candle on three, together, and Olivia almost forgets why she hates today.

Rachel places a hand on her daughter’s back. “Okay, El, she got your present, now say goodbye to Aunt Liv so she can go back to work. I’ll see you soon, Liv.”

Olivia nods and smiles. The little girl does as she’s told, waving goodbye and grinning still. “Bye, Aunt Liv, bye Peter.”

Peter. She’d forgotten about him, here, witnessing all this. He’s right there, staring at her over the rim of his coffee cup, pensive. “What?” she asks.

He gives her a smile she’s never seen: fleeting, sincere. “I didn't know it was your birthday today."

Olivia looks away, dreading the rest of the day again. “You do now.”

 

***

 

It’s often during patrol that Olivia remembers Lakeside used to be a beautiful town.

Driving around the same places day in and day out makes the focus of vision shift, expand to take in everything at once as it passes by, like the broad strokes of a painting as seen from afar. Without the details, the litter, the darkened, unkempt alleys and the broken people in them bathing in the neon lights of the all-american twenty-four-hour obsession, she can see what people saw ten years back: a haven, a little pocket of quiet and calm.

The concept seems idyllic if she refuses to also see the shadows that lurked all about, wearing the faces of children someone loved and lost, once. Those shadows are the only thing that haven’t deserted, left for better places, but they’re obvious now, no need to hide in plain sight when the secret’s out.

Now, Lakeside is little more than a resting place for strays, and broken people, and the old. It’s the end of the line, nowhere to turn except back.

“So what does Deputy Dunham usually do for her birthday?” Peter fiddles with the radio, doesn’t look at her as he asks the question, but Olivia feels the weight of his full attention nonetheless.

“I don’t really celebrate,” Olivia says. “It’s just a day, like any other before it.”

“That’s cheerful."

Her eyes flick over to him, then away when they meet his. Her hands are tight on the wheel. “Birthdays remind me of…things…that I’d rather forget.”

Peter slides down in his seat, says simply, “Okay." And it’s not lack of interest in any way, it’s respect. He doesn’t stop looking at her, but he also doesn’t ask anything else, doesn’t push her.

She would thank him, but the words are stuck in the back of her throat, and she’s pretty sure if she opens her mouth she’ll choke.

 

 ***

 

A young woman stops them by the seven-eleven on Main Street, and an old man by the bridge; both ask them if it’s true that the lake spat out another body this week. Olivia says that there’s an investigation ongoing so there’s not much she can say, but yes, Dinah, a police car found the body earlier that morning on the west shore, and no, Ernie, those are just superstitions, there’s nothing supernatural about corpses rotting in large bodies of water. Happens all the time in places larger than this.

“What’s the deal with the lake, anyway?” Peter fiddles with the radio yet again, looking for something other than traffic patterns or the news. “Everyone gets this look when they ask, like they just saw a ghost or something.”

Olivia rolls the window back up, looks at him. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Huh. Okay.” Olivia puts the car back in drive and moves off. “There was a murder, about ten, eleven years back, a teenage girl, local girl—people from other places didn’t really end up in Lakeside all that often back then—they thought she was just missing, at first. Disappearances used to be a yearly thing during the winter; I guess people thought, hey, children go walking in the forest unsupervised, or hitchhike out of town, get lost before they can make it back. The kind of thing you tell yourself to sleep easier at night. So, it’s the last month of spring, and the ice over the lake is melting. A hunting party makes a stop by the north of the lake, and one of the men thinks he sees something close to shore, so a few of them go and investigate.”

“Let me guess,” Peter says. “It was the missing kid.”

“Yeah. The ice had preserved the body pretty well, she was only starting to rot. So they call the cops, and the cops figure she went down with that year’s klunker—they used to get one decrepit old car to put out on the lake every winter, bet on the day the ice would break underneath it. They sent most of the money to charity. Anyway, the cops pull the car from the bottom of the lake, find very little other than the fact that the car went down with the trunk open, figure she’d been killed and dumped there, hidden under everyone’s nose. And someone, somewhere makes the connection: there’d been a disappearance every year, and every year a car went down and the children stayed missing. Military divers got involved by that point; they pulled all the cars that weren’t rusted to bits from the lake, some of them from as far back as the fifties. There was a missing child in every one of them.”

Peter takes a minute to answer. “Well, I’m gonna sleep like a baby tonight, knowing that I can see the local mass grave out the window. They ever find the killer?”

It’s probably sick that she finds amusement in the plain discomfort of his tone, his posture, but today of all days it makes her smile. “No. The first few months they thought it was a cult of some kind, because of the frequency and method of the killings—the fact that they’d gone on for so long. That and the ice burial. It all screams ritualistic, but they couldn't find anything to prove it, so, after a couple of years with no leads they just let it go.”

“Must've been fun, growing up north of nowhere with murder all around."

“I wouldn't know.” Olivia shrugs. “I’m from Jacksonville, not Lakeside.”

“Jacksonville, Florida?”

“Yeah. My grandfather was from here though. My father’s father. Rachel’s apartment used to be his.”

“How’d you get all the way up here from _Jacksonville?_ ”

“It’s a long story.”

Not necessarily a happy one.

 

***

 

By midday they stop for gas at the Exxon on the southernmost tip of the town, and the rumors of the body they found chase them like a pack of wolves after prey. Word of mouth travels fast in a region where gossip is the meat and mead of everyday life, and nothing makes for better gossip than murder.

Peter steps out of the car, stretches his legs. “I’m gonna use the restroom, you want anything?”

Olivia shakes her head no, thanks, and watches him go up the stairs and into the store. She starts the pump. Inside the car, on the console, her phone beeps. She reaches through the open window, retrieves the phone just as the noise stops. The text reads:

LIV,

TESTS ARE DONE. WAITING ON RESULTS. MEET ME WHEN YOU GET BACK—FRANK.

She nods to herself, replies to let the coroner know she got the message, and returns the phone to her pocket. Eventually, the pump comes to a stop with a mechanical groan, and the numbers on the screen stop with it. Olivia removes the nozzle and pushes the fuel cap closed.

When she turns back to get the store in her line of sight, Peter’s crouching by a slip of a girl, talking to her. She can’t be more than eighteen, and she's tense, extremely thin. Whatever he’s saying, she looks put off by it, shaking her head and curling away from him. Frowning, Olivia walks towards them.

Peter sees her, meets her eyes, and there’s a warning in his furrowed brow that makes her pause, approach slowly until she’s just within hearing range of their conversation.  He’s saying “…I promise. I’m not gonna rat you out and I’m not gonna take away whatever you got from the store, okay? I just want you to show me your hands.”

The girl is hugging herself, and Olivia can see her confusion, but the calm in his tone must have worked because she reaches out and puts her hand in his. The shaking is only perceptible because Olivia’s looking closely, and it’s not from the cold. Her fingernails are bloody, bitten to the quick.

Peter keeps one of his hands holding hers, and the other grabs the sleeve of her sweater. “I’m gonna push this up. Is that okay?”

The girl nods, a glassy expression on her face, and he pushes the fabric up gently, inch by inch. Under the sweater, a familiar pattern of bruises mottles her skin. For a moment, Olivia sees a different girl standing there. Smaller, younger, lighter hair. It’s gone when she blinks next, but the pain of the bruises remains. And the anger, always the anger. Only then does she realize she’s been holding her breath—the pressure in her chest releases with her next exhale.

Peter keeps his hands on the sleeve of the sweater, doesn’t dare touch her anywhere else, and he’s still staring, like a curator looking at a monument that’s been defaced, committing the damage to memory. His tone is dead when he speaks. “You know the person who did this to you?”

The girl shakes her head no. “I can’t remember.” Her words are short of a sob, little more than a whisper— she lies. Maybe she has to.

“That’s alright.” Peter rolls the sweater back down her arm and stands up. She takes her hand away and he doesn’t stop her. “Have you eaten anything?”

Another wordless 'no.'

Peter opens the door to the store, gestures towards it. “C’mon then, let’s get you some food.”

They come out minutes later with a burger and two orders of fries and he’s saying something about sweet pickles and hot sauce, and the girl’s making a face, but the pull of her muscles is not anxious, not afraid; the knot in Olivia’s gut loosens a fraction. Peter glances at her, face shuttered, and nods an “okay.”

She approaches them as they sit on the steps, and the girl tenses but Olivia sits anyway, putting Peter between them for her sake, even if it chafes.

“Julie, this is my friend, Olivia. Olivia, this is Julie.” Peter gestures between them. “Fries, anyone?" 

 

***

 

They drive Julie home and home is a small house nearby that’s falling apart, an older man smoking in his robe and knee-length woolen socks, seemingly immune to the cold. He sits on a rocking chair on the thin, dirty stripe of the front porch, and doesn’t seem to notice the police car by the door. The scrapes on his knuckles speak for themselves. A black-and-orange cat lies, licking its paws, on the window sill.

 _A cliché,_ Olivia thinks, but the thought is devoid of amusement. Her gun burns on her hip, all the way through cloth and skin and the bone underneath.

They leave her with Olivia’s card and Peter’s number, and a smile that is barely there. Olivia knows it's better than nothing.

The rage she felt is just a numbness now, another desensitized patch on the inside of her ribcage for her heart to beat against. This kind of anger doesn’t leave; it resurfaces sometimes, keeps her from sleep until she’s unable to dream a dream that is not a nightmare, or forget she dreamt at all after she’s woken up.

It’s frustration, the knowledge of failure (that she can do nothing without the victim’s testimony). By now, she has gotten used to the companionship.

They are driving somewhere around the western bounds of the town when Peter finally speaks. “Stop the car,” he says, his voice like gravel.

He’s been so quiet, so still, that Olivia’s almost surprised at the sound, but he’s looking out the window, face blank and body tense and so entirely off that she doesn’t question him. She pulls over by the side of the road, and she waits.

Calmly, deliberately, he unfastens his seatbelt, opens his door and steps out of the car. He starts walking. He doesn’t stop.

Olivia turns the engine off when he turns right and follows a path veering off the side of the road, cutting through farmland. She calls after him but he doesn’t seem to hear her, just keeps walking on until he hits a bend in the road and disappears. She follows.

The path is rocks and packed earth turned to mud in the seasonal rain, old and well-traveled and yet uneven, and she has to watch her step in the dimming light of late afternoon. It takes her through pastures reeking of cow, past the edges of the first farm and into the next. She doesn’t run, but her pace is brisk. The smell of autumn leaves burning permeates the air.

She finds him behind the barn on the second farm, about twenty minutes in from where she left the car and the street, leaning on his elbows against the rotting wood of the fence, his head down. “Peter,” she says, and she could’ve whispered it but in this eerie, middle-of-nowhere silence it would still be too loud.

Instantly, he turns to her. His eyes scan her face until they settle on hers. “Hey.”

“What the hell was that?”

Peter blinks, like the thought of her asking is the strangest thing, and he shrugs. “Felt like walking.”

Olivia purses her lips and approaches. She’s fooling herself. She knows what this is: anger, impotence, the same things she was too busy raging against to realize he was feeling as well. He looks away, stares at the flat land beyond the fence.

“How did you know, about the girl?” she asks him.

Peter swallows, and she follows the shape of his adam’s apple outlined in the golden light of the barn lamp in the background. “She was stealing, at the store. She was good, too, quick hands, good wardrobe. I caught a glimpse of her arm when she was sneaking a Mars bar up her sleeve, and…you know the rest.” Then, after a beat, “You thought I was scaring her.” The words are soft, but it’s a certainty, not a question.

“You were, at first.”

Peter frowns. Considers it. “Maybe, but that’s not what I meant. You thought I was doing something I wasn’t. What was it? Did you think I was hitting on her?”

“No.” Olivia takes a breath. “I don’t know what I thought. I just—I knew her fear. I felt it.” _Felt it like it was mine, and you were that fear._

“And you thought you’d blame me, since there was no one else.”

“Yes.” She says it harsher than she means to, because he doesn’t understand. He can’t understand.

Peter only nods. “Why wouldn’t she speak? I mean, you saw the bruises. We were right there, if she’d said the word we could’ve just charged him with assault and she’d be rid of him. Why would someone protect a monster like that?”

Red polka dots. White linen. Blood. These are the images his words bring forth, but they’re not a shock. Olivia has been seeing them for too long, when her eyes close.

“Maybe she can’t,” she says. “Maybe he’s all she has. There could be a hundred reasons, and they would all be valid. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do.” She folds her hand into his slowly, the touch awkward because Olivia has never been good at this, at giving comfort or asking for it. She tries all the same. “What you did for her, though, that was good.”

“I didn’t do anything. I just bought her lunch.”

Olivia shakes her head, smiles a little. “You were kind, and you didn't pity her. It’s not going to fix her, but it’s a start.”

There’s something raw about him, a nakedness Olivia can’t place. He gets like this when it’s quiet, when it’s just him and her: a little more hopeful, a lot less confident. And it clicks, then. Maybe, Olivia thinks, maybe, underneath all the smoke and all the mirrors, this is him.  

Peter squeezes back.

 

 *** 

 

“Dunham! I was starting to think you weren’t coming by.” Frank Stanton grabs a paper towel from the roll he keeps by the sink, dries his hands and moves to greet her, a half-eaten plate of fruit salad on the empty gurney beside him.

“Sorry, Frank, got delayed on the way,” she says, coat and scarf slung over her arm. Even if it’s always cold down at the morgue, it is never colder than the prequel to a Lakeside Winter, and Olivia has been out in it for so long today that just walking through a wing of the hospital to get here has her sweating under her clothes.

“It’s fine, at least you got here after the test results. That’s always good.”

“So what’ve we got?”

“Well," Frank says, waving her closer, "I'm afraid it's not much. I did get an I.D. but other than that the blood tests came back clean, so there's not a lot I can tell you on that front. The autopsy didn't go much better, but I found a few things I thought you might be interested in."

"What things?" Olivia moves towards the second gurney, where their corpse has already been autopsied and put back together, a blue-stitched Y cutting from shoulders to navel. The stitches are small, neat, the cuts steady. It's a beautiful job, more fit for an operating table than the morgue.

"I'm assuming you saw the palate indentations already?"

"Yes, I did. Three nail markings, just like on the other two bodies, same place, same configuration. "

"Ok, good. So, as before, the indentations were done post-mortem, though the reason for them still eludes me, to be honest. This one didn’t drown either, cause of death was blunt force trauma—someone hit him really hard in the back of the head, cracked his skull open like a piñata. You have to allow for some wiggle room when dealing with this level of decomposition, of course, but from the wound pattern it looks like the weapon could've been a tire iron, maybe a crowbar. Now, that's all pretty standard, but—and here's where it gets interesting—I found something else."

Frank moves to the side, retrieves a file that he places in front of her. It’s filled with pictures of the other victims, all taken here, in this room. Close-ups of their mouths, open and closed, of their nostrils and their eyes. "I didn't really think anything of it in the other two bodies,” Frank says, “because it's not something that's necessarily related to the way they died, but, here, you see how his gums are swollen?" He waits for her to nod before he moves on. "Now check his eyes and his nose."

"They're also swollen."

"Exactly. And look at the pictures. It's the same in all three of them, most probably also post-mortem."

Olivia frowns, chewing on her upper lip. "Why would that happen?"

"As far as I can tell, it's a symptom of rapid dehydration. If they'd been alive when it happened, I'd lean towards some sort of virus. Hypovolemic shock maybe, considering the temperatures in the lake."

"How rapid are we talking about?"

"For this much swelling? Minutes, maybe an hour."

"Minutes?" Olivia closes the file, hands on her hips. "What does that?"

Frank shrugs. “No idea. A volcano?”

 

***

 

“It’s happening sooner than we expected.”

“Of course it is. We always knew our predictions would have a margin of error. The question is, why?”

“We don’t know, but the doors are getting wider. Unstable. The bosses are worried—more and more people are flocking to Jones.”

“More people you’re going to have to kill, you mean.”

“Yes, it’s gotten messier. The balance is precarious enough as it is, and the frequency of events is getting higher. He’s getting confident.”

“And the organization keeps getting smaller because of it, when we should be expanding. I can see how that would be troublesome. Have you found the rest of the subjects?"

"Some of them, not all. Jones got to a couple before we could extract them; his methods are…rough. My unit scraped floors for a while. Thirteen and Two?"

"Still where you left them. Perfectly healthy, still somewhat sane. You might want to check up on them soon though."

"Trouble?"

"That depends on your outlook. We could just be very lucky."

"I don't like riddles, Sam."

"You people, it's like they get in your head and remove the joy of intrigue with a scalpel when they draw you in. Bishop is here. Both of them."

 

***

 

Charlie’s waiting for her when she makes it back to the Department.

“Astrid said you wanted to see me,” Olivia says. She makes sure the door is closed and takes the seat being offered to her, across from his on the desk.

She has always liked this office. There is a sense of security that carries over from the clean spaces of the room, the roughness of the brick behind the sheriff and his desk, and the whitewashed walls to her left and back; the window to her right, always open an inch no matter the season, the blinds halfway up, and the couch underneath it.

“I did,” Charlie says, closing the file on his desk and setting it aside. “What did the doctor find?”

“Not a lot. The victim is army: Major Paul Norton, on leave visiting relatives in Madison according to records. What he was doing in Lakeside is unknown at the moment. Frank also concluded that the bodies of all three victims show signs of accelerated dehydration, but he couldn’t tell me what caused it.”

“We already knew he wouldn’t. Any match on the cause of death?”

Olivia shakes her head. “No, this time the killer broke his skull; the first victim was stabbed and the second drowned. To tell you the truth if it weren’t for the punctured palates and the dehydration I’d say these murders were entirely unrelated.”

“So it’s exactly as the files said.”

Olivia grimaces, but nods. “To the letter, as far as I can tell.”

“You’re still thinking this is military?”

“I really don’t see a better explanation, considering the source. Do you?”

“No, no I don’t, but that still doesn’t explain how you come into this.”

“Yeah…” Her smile is wry. She doesn’t need the reminder; it’s not like she’s been able to think of anything else. “I just wish I knew where the lies end.”

“Look, Liv, I know this is hard on you. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to…” he trails off, uncomfortable. Feelings are not something they routinely discuss. It’s not part of the job. “Anyway, if you need something, if you wanna take a couple days off…”

“No, It’s okay. I’m okay, Charlie.” She knows he sees the lie. Despite the menacing frown, she also knows he won’t call her on it. It’s not his style.

“Alright.” Charlie sighs, and she’s already standing, moving to the door. “Keep looking at those missing persons reports. Maybe these things will go back to the victims’ families, pretend everything’s normal. We’d get some answers then.”

“Will do.”

At the moment, Olivia can only see questions.

 

***

 

"Eight Ball Pub and Bowling, Nick speaking."

Olivia seats on the wooden bench outside the Sheriff’s office, shuffling through the stack of daily mail. Finding nothing with her name on it, she smiles into the phone. “Aw, listen to you go, you actually do a good impression of a grown up."

“Deputy, you offend me,” Nick says, overdramatic as he’s always been. "I assure you, any resemblance is purely coincidental.”

"Hey, Nicky."

"Good to hear your voice, Olive. This a social call or should I put Sam on the phone?"

Olivia chuckles. “You know me too well."

"Sam, then. Gimme a second, I think he's in the back."

"I can give you two, if you want."

"Sassy.” If eye-rolling had a sound attached she’d be listening for it right about now. Instead she hears him set the phone down on the bar with a thump. If she pays attention, she can make out the soft sounds of Phil Collins’ greatest hits playing in the background, meaning the place is empty and Sam’s already had his share of beer.

Soon enough the man she’s looking for is on the phone. “I swear I wasn’t speeding, deputy!”

“Hello, Sam.”

“Ah, Buttercup, I have missed your dulcet tones. My bartender didn’t specify when he said the call was from the Sheriff’s Department. What can I do for you?”

“I need a favor.”

“Of course you do,” he says, in that way of his that lets her know he’s considering whether she’s hit her head or is just dumb. “I just asked what it was, didn’t I?”

Olivia rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I just remembered why I don’t like you.”

“Oh, I’m great for memory like that.” The sound of clinking glass and Nick humming along to _You Can’t Hurry Love_ echoes in the background. Olivia chooses to focus on that.

Any conversation with Sam not about bowling or beer has the potential to turn into a nightmare, given enough time. He loves to tease. Aware of this, she ignores the taunt. “You need to get a waitress.”

“A waitress? You out of a job, deputy?”

“It’s not for me. Her name’s Julie Benson, she’s sixteen. She’s going to be calling for the job in a few days, and I need you to let her have it.”

He considers it for a moment before replying. “What do I get in return?”

“How about I forget that speeding ticket you mentioned?”

“And the two before it,” Sam bargains. It’s what Sam does. He’s incredibly good at it, persuasive in a way that is irritating because it has more to do with blackmail than a skill with words. She’s fond of him and he knows it, but she doesn’t trust him. He knows that, too.

“Done.”

“You got yourself a deal, Dunham.” He sounds incredibly pleased.

“Good. Put Nick back on the phone, will you?”

Sam snickers. “Y’know, you should brush up on you social skills. That’s just rude.”

“If you pissed me off a little less, maybe I’d treat you accordingly.”

“Whatever. Here he is, talk his ears off, smile a little, joke. Maybe look human for appearances’ sake.”

“Very funny.”

It’s Nick who answers back. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing, Sam’s being Sam.”

“Ah. You do know he only does it because it bothers you, right?”

“Oh, I know.” She does, really. The knowledge hasn’t made him any less irritating so far.

“And you play along because?”

“I figure it does him good to feel important every so often.”

Nick laughs. “I am so glad to be your friend, I mean, you actually like me. How many people can say that?”

“Don’t get cocky, bartender.” She’s known Nick Lane since she was three years old. He’s the only part of her life aside from Rachel that’s more or less intact, barring some tears, some scars. She turns serious. “Listen, there’s a girl who’s gonna be taking a job there in a few days, her name’s Julie. She’s had a rough time and I, uh, I’d appreciate it if you made sure Sam’s careful with her.”

As always, he seems to sense the severity of the situation by the turn of her mood. “Of course. Any particulars I need to know?”

“Not really. You’ll know as much as I do when you see her. Just don’t stare at the bruises too much.”

 

***

 

Peter can’t bring himself to get out of the car, and he’s running out of excuses. Outside, the sky is already dark enough for the stars, and the air is still clean enough, up here, that he can see them sprawl. “You wanna come up? Maybe get a drink or three?”

Beside him, Olivia shifts in her seat, turns towards him. She looks dangerous in the lack of light, with shadows around her eyes and her pupils dilated inside the evergreen rings around their edges, speckled with gold; her pale hair, unbound, haloes the shape of her face. There’s a flash in his mind, a single frame disconnected from sequence, layered subliminally over the stream of images in the theatre to make the audience react in the fashion desired, of her legs wrapped around him as he slides inside her, her breath hot against his cheek. He blinks it away, but she smiles a little anyway, like she knows.

“I’d love to,” she says. “But Rachel is going to kill me if I don’t show up tonight.”

“I thought you didn’t have any plans.” Peter raises his eyebrow.

Olivia chuckles, but it’s a tired sound. “Try telling that to my sister.”

There’s a weariness to her today, as if the day itself weighs on her, clouds her vision. It’s like she’s walking on eggshells, fearing the movement of the world around her at the edge of her vision, measuring her breathing so it makes no sound.

“Olivia, are you alright?” The question is inaccurate, its formulation too general for the response he wants, but he doesn’t know how to ask the thousand questions he needs her to answer. Not without her seeing exactly how bad he wants to pick her apart, learn her whys and hows inside and out. Everything she does and says is one more thing he doesn’t expect and he’s on his toes all the fucking time when she’s around. Reading people is what he’s supposed to excel at, but she’s long since made a wreck of his pride. He’d really like it back.

“I’m fine,” is all she says, and ok, yeah, that he expected (he’s learning). She looks away and it’s clear to them both that she’s anything but.  

“Sure you are,” Peter says under his breath, and he shouldn’t have. It doesn’t come out right. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s pretty sure he’d understand if only she let him, and it’s infuriating, feeling like this. Caring. He tries to avoid it, if possible.

It must hurt, he thinks, to care for everyone all the time, the way she does. And it makes him ache, that she gives so much of herself when no one seems to care for her.  

Peter shakes his head, grabs the door handle and pulls. The door clicks open, but she stops him before he can step out. She puts her hand on his arm, just a brush of her fingers over the fabric of his jacket, but it’s the second time she has willingly touched him today. Generally, and barring all events happening within the confines of his bed, Olivia keeps to herself, hands always in her jacket pockets or at her sides, making a smaller target of herself, drawing attention away, like she’s permanently trying not to disturb the air. Coming from her, the touch is as effective as a plea not to leave just yet.

It takes her a moment, but when she speaks it comes out in a rush. “I had a stepfather, and when he drank he’d accuse my mom of seeing other men, and then he’d hit her.” Olivia pauses, looks away, and Peter’s stomach drops. After a small second she goes on. “She never called the police, never defended herself. Sometimes, when she wasn’t home he’d go for me, and when she came back she’d see the bruises but she never defended me either. Then, one day, he beat her really bad, broke her nose. I was nine. He stormed out of the house, drove off, and my mom’s crying and there’s blood running down her face and into her clothes. I remember it was her favorite dress, red polka dots on white linen. Rachel’s in our room, and the room’s on the second floor but I can hear her bawling. She’s hysterical, little fists banging against the door I locked before I went down the stairs, and my mother is still there, on the ground, and I can’t help either of them.

“And then I hear his car again. He’s turned back around. He kept his gun in the drawer of his nightstand. When he opened the door, I pulled the trigger, then I pulled it again. I can still see his face, daring me to finish…but I couldn’t. They took him away, the police—I guess the neighbors called them when they heard the gunshots— they said he couldn’t be saved, but he didn’t die. We never saw him again. He sends me a greeting card every year, on my birthday, just to remind me that he’s still out there.”

The silence that follows could not be broken if he tried. It’s heavy and thick and it will not be dispelled. Peter stares ahead and sees nothing. He doesn’t even notice that he’s left the door halfway open, the cold slipping inside the car, freezing his side.

“Not what you bargained for, is it?” she asks, and the silence slips away like it was never there, replaced by the rush of blood through his head, the far-apart sounds of cars speeding by on the street beyond the alley they’ve parked in, the rhythm of her breathing beside him. He looks at her and she smiles and it’s ugly, self-deprecating and daring all at once, daring him to speak, daring him to pity her.

It’s self defense. A knee-jerk reaction to his looking behind the door she’s cracked, casting a light on the horrors she keeps trapped inside, the horrors she lives with, day and night. Peter knows this. He doesn’t mind. If it takes even a fraction of the hurt away, he won’t care if she does it again.

In answer, he brushes away the strands of hair that have fallen over her eyes, cups her cheek. “I didn’t bargain,” he tells her, low enough that the sound is lost between their breathing and the howl of the wind through the door. Olivia tenses, then relaxes under his palm. She grabs his wrist, and he wonders if she does it to anchor herself or to keep him from moving closer to her.

It makes sense now, the way she spoke in that field, the tightly reined anger and her knowing expression; the way she blamed him for wrongs he didn't commit. Finally, he understands—not everything, and not all at once, but it’s a start, a crack he can slip through. Part of him wishes she’d kept him in the dark. It would be easier that way.

Words fail him, so he touches instead. When he runs his thumb over the sharp edge of her cheekbone, she closes her eyes and loosens the hold of her hand around his.

Olivia slips out of his grasp like water, straightens in her seat. "You should go,” she says, and it’s like nothing ever happened. “Walter’s gonna start calling the morgue if you don’t show up before he’s finished dinner.”

Peter barks a laugh, scratches at his beard with fingernails he needs to trim. He breathes in relief, and his breath turns to fog in the cold. “Do you have any idea how much I wish that was a joke?”

Without another word, he gets out of the car and closes the door. She doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t call him back, and he doesn’t feel the need to add more words to the train-crash mess of today. Olivia drives away and he watches, but he doesn’t climb the stairs when she’s gone.

Walter’s piece-of-shit Oldsmobile is parked around the corner, the keys in his coat pocket. He has errands to run.

Peter has always worked better without attachments, he’s made it a point to be transient, inconsequential to his surroundings. It’s clear now: he’s stayed in Lakeside too long. 

 

***

 

Ella takes her time falling asleep. Eventually, her eyelids close of their own accord and her breathing evens, but Olivia lingers on top of the covers, bracketing the small curve of her body with the shape of her own. She runs her hand through Ella’s smooth hair, the color of almonds and honey, slowly roasted, over and over.

Coloring is the only thing about Ella that is not prominently Rachel’s (not prominently Marilyn’s), and it fits her, being different. It gives her a fierceness that contrasts with the angelic disposition of her features, brings out the echoes of mischief that dance around her eyes sometimes, behind the raw intelligence and all the wisdom that comes from being seven.

Light spills through the open doorway, plays with the shadows over her niece’s features, and the girl burrows into her pillows, nose scrunched up. Olivia smiles at the sight, just a twist of her lips, gone in the blink of an eye. She rises from the bed slowly so as not to wake her, presses a soft kiss to her temple. This is the closest she will ever come to being a mother, the closest she’ll get to loving someone who is a part of her, someone innocent; loving them fully, completely, without holding back. She’s made her peace with that.

The faucet shuts off in the kitchen and Rachel comes out to meet her in the living room. She sets two wineglasses down on the coffee table, and a bottle of cabernet to the side. “Thank you for doing that,” she says, “bed time’s been difficult lately.”

“Please. You know I love to.” Olivia sits on the wide leather chair facing away from the balcony, pours herself some wine and sips.

“She’s so good with you, I’m almost jealous.”

Olivia laughs. “It’s the difference. She knows you’re always going to be here to tuck her in. I come and go. ”

“I suppose,” Rachel sighs. "Speaking of, has John called?”

“Not yet,” she shakes her head. “He’ll call though, he always does.” It hurts, but she wishes he wouldn’t. The last time she heard his voice, every lie left a wound.

“How long has he been away this time?”

“Almost eight months.”

“Christ. I don't know how you do it, Liv,” Rachel says. “I mean, if I didn't have a little person to care for…I think I’d go crazy, being so alone.”

“I don’t mind, you know?" She realizes the truth of it as she speaks. "I miss him, I miss him all the time, but there’s more to my life than that.” She means every word. Even now.

What that says about her, she doesn’t know.

Olivia envies her sister. She envies the way Rachel moves through life with a smile, how she charms the world around her. Envies the ease of her posture, her genuine warmth. Rachel is funny, and nurturing, and easy to be with (Olivia pales in comparison). She has made mistakes and she has dealt with her tragedies: a failed marriage and a custody battle still unresolved, a daughter to raise on her own, but she doesn’t dwell on the past.

Sometimes memory fails her, and Olivia envies that most of all.

 

***

 

He should have picked a town further south.

Preferably, some place where he wouldn’t need to be scraping the frost off the car’s windshield in the middle of fucking October, or dress in so many layers he could compete with an onion before there’s snow on the ground. Just a state’s difference would have sufficed, there are plenty of small, out-of-the-way towns in southern Illinois that could have gotten the job done. But no. No, he had to come all the way up to north Wisconsin to freeze his balls into retreating to some place in the vicinity of his esophagus, all because the ghost of his conscience would not let him leave Walter behind to get killed like a pig in a slaughterhouse.

In the realm of bad decisions that last one will forever be king.

Peter can hear the ruckus before he even walks through the door, the infernal clatter of pots and pans and cabinet doors banging shut, the angry muttering and the unsteady shuffle of slippered feet on the floor, everything too familiar for his own comfort.

“Walter!” he says, loud enough that his voice carries over all the noise. His father startles and steps into view, hunched over and wrinkled and greyed, through the kitchen door. Old, and mad. Definitely mad. Peter’s pretty sure there’s nothing under that toffee brown robe, and he prays to all the gods he doesn’t believe in that the knot around the man’s waist is tighter than the national budget of the average third world country. He’s seen enough of Walter in nine months to last him for another eighteen years or so, if not a couple of lifetimes.

“Oh, hello, son. Did I wake you?”

“I just got here. What the hell are you doing?”

“I—I was looking for the Devil Dogs.” Walter has the grace to look mildly chastened.

“Devil Dogs,” Peter repeats, incredulous, pursing his lips.

“I had a craving.”

“Sure, you did. Do those happen to be the same Devil Dogs you made me look for last Tuesday at three in the morning, by any chance? Because you ate those, Walter, the entire box.”

“Did I?” his father asks, and he sounds truly curious, turns back into the kitchen to search the cabinets once more. “I was sure I’d left some for later…”

Peter hangs his coat on the rack by the door and steps out of his boots. He stretches, retrieves a bottle of beer from the fridge. “You know what, Walter? Maybe the aliens took them.”

“Wouldn't that be wonderful!" Walter says, still searching.

"Yeah. Wonderful. Right." The bottle opener was tragically repurposed in another one of Walter’s three-in-the-morning debacles back in August, and since Peter is never going near it again, he makes use of the granite edge of the kitchen counter instead. The cap comes off with a soft hiss and a pop.

"Do you think Deputy Dunham could've eaten them? It wouldn't be surprising, with all the intercourse you've been having."

Peter doesn’t spit his beer. That’s the kind of thing that only happens to other people, people who haven’t spent the past ten years of their lives wringing large sums of money out of other people’s unsuspecting pockets via methods of questionable legality; people who haven’t stolen from the Irish mob with a smile on and still have breath in their lungs, who haven’t worn more faces and more names than they have fingers and toes; people who can’t lie their way into Local Law Enforcement with forged papers and a few words, and a criminal record as wild and varied as his own. No, he doesn’t spit his beer, he’s better than that. He sneezes it. “What did you just say?"

“Oh, hunger is a perfectly normal response to intense physical activity, son, there’s no need to look so shocked. I don’t think I have ever eaten as much as when I first started dating your mother.”

Self-preservation doesn’t let him hear that last part, but he’s pretty sure he has enough information. It’s curious. At no point in time does it occur to Peter to deny it; at no point do the words, _Walter, I am not sleeping with Olivia_ come out of his mouth. Like any good poker player, Peter knows when to bluff, when to fold, and when he’s fucked.

He’s fucked. And Olivia is going to kill him.

Shit. Olivia.

Two can keep a secret, maybe. Three? Not so much. A town like this one, if this little gem gets out of the confines of these four walls, out of Walter’s mouth, every soul is going to know how they fucked, when and what they had for lunch afterwards faster than Peter can say ‘divorce.’ And she doesn’t deserve that. Doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s gossip, to have her life put out on display for public perusal because one crazy old man couldn’t keep his mouth shut tight.

The thought makes him angry, and anger has long been the fuel to his fire. “You say so much as a word about this to anyone, Walter, and I promise you, I will leave you here when I skip town.”

Walter actually turns to him at that, quivering left hand clasped in his right. “We're leaving?”

“What, you thought we were staying?”

“Well, we—we’ve stayed here longer than anywhere else yet, and I—I thought…It's a very nice town.” He deflates like a squeaky toy that’s been chewed through by a particularly voracious dog, but at the moment Peter feels no sympathy for him, and no remorse.

“Yes, and when the people chasing after me find us it's going to make a very nice grave. Of course we're leaving.” Peter pushes off the counter, leaves the kitchen behind to put distance between them. Murder is not a crime he wants to add to the list. It wouldn’t do, to have come all this way and still end up with his father’s blood on his hands.

Walter trails after him. “But...what about the diner? What about Olivia?”

“What about her, Walter?” He really doesn’t want to think about this, doesn’t want to say it out loud. “She already had a life in this town before we got here, and she's still going to have one after we leave. Just get what you need and go back to sleep, please.”

For once, Walter listens to him. Before he climbs the stairs, he turns back around and says, “Son? When are we leaving?”

Peter sighs and drops down on the couch, his head in his hands. “I don’t know, Walter. Soon. I’ll let you know.”

“Good night, son.”

“Night, Walter.”

The shuffle of slippers and the creak of the stairs offset the silence.

 

*** 

 

There's a longish box waiting by her door when she gets home. It's wrapped in newspaper, damp from being on the ground and unmarked, but the wrapping is precise. Macabre possibilities run through her mind.

Olivia has always been good at picturing all the ways situations can go from wrong to apocalyptically messed up in the span of a sigh. Imagining the many things that could be in that box, considering the date, is not hard at all.

It’s about the size of her forearm and heavy when she picks it up, heavier than she expected. She debates for a moment whether it’s wise to bring it inside, but decides that whatever it is, she’s going to face it. There are hurts and then there are hurts, but no matter the type she’s always been the kind of person that rips the band-aid off.

So focused is she on the package that she almost misses the white, square envelope on the floor when she opens the door. Almost.

 _Thinking of You_ , says the card, like all the others before it (twenty or so), and it’s a threat disguised as sentiment, danger thinly veiled with longing. It’s malicious, and so very clever. If someone else were to get the card, someone not her, nothing in it would raise suspicion.

The envelope wasn't dropped in the mailbox, it was pushed under her door.

He has never been so close before.

Olivia drops the card on the coffee table, the words facing the emptiness between them and the ceiling. The package, still unopened, she sets beside it, her movements efficient and mechanical. Before she's aware of the direction her feet have taken, she finds herself inside her bedroom, hands around the gun she placed on the nightstand before she left for dinner.

The weight of the Glock™ is comforting, the metal cool against her palm, the grip familiar and smooth. She's taken care of it with dedication. If she learned anything from her stepfather, it was that devotion to your weapon pays off. It's a lesson she carries everywhere with her. So far, the gun has returned the favor tenfold.

She keeps it with her when she turns back to the living room, but she leaves the safety on. He's not here. And in any case, after twenty years her aim has improved considerably; if he were, he'd already be dead.

The apartment is dark—she forgot to turn the lights on after she came through the door, but the night is clear enough that she can see just fine with only the light spilling in from the windows, leaving tiger-stripes on the walls as it passes through the open blinds. With the headache she can feel building between her temples, the darkness is welcome to stick around for a while.

She sits down on the couch, puts the gun over the card, stares at the package for a long time. At some point the call she was expecting comes, but she doesn’t bother to stand and pick up the phone. She refuses to keep acting like everything is fine. She wants to not feel anything for one night, but maybe that’s too much to ask. The answering machine kicks in after a few dozen rings, and sure enough, it’s her husband’s voice pouring into the room through the speakers.

John says, “Hey, Liv. Sorry I’m calling so late, the time difference did a number on me. Things are looking up over here, I might be coming home sooner than we thought, maybe even next month. I miss you, you know? Germany’s cold without you in it. Colder than Lakeside, imagine that. Anyway, I know it’s not your favorite day, but I didn’t want to let it go by without calling. Liv? I love you.” The recording ends with that.

 _Yeah,_ Olivia thinks. _I love you, too. That’s the problem._

Tired of second-guessing herself, tired of today and wanting desperately for it to end, she grabs the package and rips the newspaper covering off, reveals the black polished box underneath. Silver lettering and slanted lines are the only adornment on the surface besides the golden sketch of a victorian man, striding forward on the bottom half.

There’s a post-it on the box, the handwriting looping and neat and familiar:

_So. About that drink (or three)…_

_—P._  

 

***

 

His cellphone wakes him, buzzing on the nightstand, reverberating on the hollow drawers below the wooden surface on top. Groaning, barely conscious, he considers throwing it against the nearest wall, seeing what comes out of that.

Instead, he answers, eyes still shut and voice muffled by the pillow, rough. “What?"

"Did I wake you?" Olivia's voice. Olivia, calling him at—he checks the clock to the side, bleary eyed—one in the morning. That alone wakes him up, fast.

Peter sits up on the bed, the metal frame creaking underneath (and no wonder Walter knew about them, really), sheets and quilt sliding down to pool around his hips, fist against his eyes. “Yeah, more or less. What's the matter?”   _Please don’t be work._

“Nothing. It's nothing. I'm sorry I woke you up.” She sounds like she might hang up, but she doesn’t. There’s a hesitance in her that is unsettling because he’s never heard it from her. She seems so sure about everything.  

“Hey, it’s fine,” he says, wanting badly to keep her on the line, but the yawn that punctuates the statement probably doesn’t help him sell it. Peter listens to her breathing as she remains silent over the receiver, and finds it more uneven than he’d like. Exhaling, he takes a risk, asks, “Did you get a card?"

She doesn’t answer immediately, but when she does her voice is quiet, soft. “No,” she tells him, and he can picture her shaking her head with the phone against her ear, though he’s not there and cannot see it.

“Happy birthday, Olivia.” He hopes she knows the sentiment is real.

A pause follows where her breathing evens, and he notices that the change is too regular and too abrupt to be a natural development. “I wanted to thank you,” Olivia says. “For the whiskey.”

_So she got it, then. Good._

“Anytime, Olivia. Anytime.” He means it more than he thought he could, more than he should. Peter King may be a different man, but sentimentality of the kind is not something that Peter Bishop can afford. It slows him down. It brought him here. One day it’ll get him killed, if he keeps going like this.

(A pity then, that he’s always been bad at listening to his own advice). 

 

***

 

Olivia wakes up on the couch with a scream caught in her throat, a shiver down her spine and cold sweat on her brow, a bottle of eighteen-year-old scotch sitting open on the table, the third glass still half full. 

A spread of pictures and diagrams covers the rest of the table, surrounding the alcohol and the weapon the way the sea surrounds its islands. The pictures capture her figure,  both up close and at a distance; the diagrams describe the creature she hunts, the three nails, the silver blood. 

Echoes of the nightmare swim behind her eyelids, press outwards, expanding. They want to drown her. Drown her like the thing that wasn’t Peter (but looked like him, felt like him, stood by her, like him) did, in the dream, his hands around her neck, pushing down on her chest, keeping her under as the lake filled her lungs. 

She sits up, takes deep breaths to steady herself, slow down her heartbeat. Her head, in her palms, pounds, the earlier headache now become a full-blown migraine. 

In the bathroom to her side, door half-way open and light spilling over the hallway floorboards in long lines, a rectangular ceramic tile lies above floor level, unaligned, pushed up and to the side. Beside it, an empty watertight bag points to the space the tile left behind, reveals an equally rectangular, foot deep cement box built into the ground.

The lightbulbs flicker on, and off, and on.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy Shit, it's done. It would not be without the unwavering aid of my very tired beta. Just so y'all know.

John Scott comes to town, and three nights out of seven Olivia is in Peter’s bed instead of his. 

Tonight she pushes him down on the rug by the foot of the bed, in front of the fireplace, and she isn't frantic, she isn’t forceful; every move is calculated, every touch precise. She smiles at him and it’s a real smile. She laughs when the zipper gets stuck and he can’t quite get her out of her pants without pausing to curse and yank at the fabric that got caught in the slider, and the laughter reaches her eyes, but there is something lonely, something sad behind them, and Peter wants to know why. 

That’s the question stuck at the forefront of his thoughts, on the tip of his tongue, before she sinks down on him and his body's caught up in the feeling of hers. She robs him of language, replaces it with heat. He finds himself watching his hands slide over her, his hips rising to meet hers, her hands on his shoulders, his chest, on the meet of his collarbones at the base of his neck—not a choke hold, just a warning: _remember who's boss._

Peter does his best to give as good as he gets (and oh, it's good). He rolls them over, and she’s gasping, shaking but not quite there. The hand on his chest moves to grab the back of his neck, short fingernails sharp against flushed flesh. He drags his mouth over her chest, teasing, tracing the edge of her breasts. 

She pulls him back up, runs her hands through his hair as he stares at her while she kisses him breathless. The ache in the pit of his stomach deepens and blooms, and it's so tempting to let himself go, to find relief, that he nearly forgets to brace against it. He shakes himself, clears his head. It's too soon to be this close. Too soon for him, too soon for her. He slides a hand down between them, puts his fingers to work.

It takes some coaxing, but it does the job. A couple hard thrusts, out of rhythm, a well-placed thumb, and Olivia’s gone, eyes scrunched tight like it’s painful for that second before her features smooth out and her body goes slack. He rocks into her slowly through the orgasm, basks in the hot slide of her, the rush of skin on skin and her hands running over him, her lips on his, lazy instead of desperate, her eyelashes like butterfly wings on his cheek. Peter shudders as he comes.

He gets rid of the condom and makes it back with a glass of water but Olivia has turned on her side, eyes closed and still breathing hard, so he sets the glass on the ground and settles behind her, caresses her back, absent minded. She shivers and Peter stops his hands, thinks she might not want them in the aftermath. It happens, sometimes. 

Uncharacteristically, she reaches out, keeps him from dropping the hand from the curve of her hip with the pressure of her fingers on top of his. 

The gesture surprises him, but then what he knows of Olivia is fragmented and contradictory at the best of times. With him, she’s suspicious one minute, then overly trusting the next. They're professional always, except when they’re not, except when no one's around and they’re off the clock, and even then it's hard for her to be close, to let go. 

Sometimes he fears it's hurting her, this thing they have. Peter takes subterfuge in stride, he has lived with it for too long not to, by now, but some people aren't built to lie all the time. He raises up on his forearm, elbow bent, hand flat against the rug and the warped floorboards beneath it. “You okay?”

“Just cold,” she says, so he moves closer to her, until there’s no air between her back and his chest. She lets him. 

“Better?”

"Yeah. Thanks.” Olivia turns his hand over, traces the contours of his palm, like she’s trying to read his future in the creases and the lines.

He catches her fingers, and they're still trembling when he weaves his in the spaces between them. “Why are you here, Olivia?”

“Here?” 

“With me.”

She turns until she’s looking at him and he can see her frown, her shoulder pressed against his sternum. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Peter rolls onto his back, lets go of her hand. He stares at the cracks in the ceiling, at the peeling plaster at the edge of the walls. “The last time I was with a married woman...he hit her, her husband. She'd come in with finger marks all over, a black eye hidden behind layers of concealer, even bruised ribs a couple of times. My best guess is she wanted to feel safe. Loved maybe.” He sighs. “What I’m saying is…you don’t strike me as the sort of person who'd do this without being pushed.”

_What does he do to you? What is it you want?_

 Olivia bites her cheek, one hand under her ear and the other flattening the wool between them, considering. He can feel the gears turn inside her mind, evaluating both his intentions and the question. "He’s not violent, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not. I think you’ve made it clear that you wouldn’t stand for that.”

That earns him a smile (a quirk of her lips more like, but at this point he’ll settle for that). “But?” she asks. 

“There are other ways to hurt people, Olivia, wounds that go deeper than bruises.”

She doesn’t answer for the longest time, long enough that he begins to think she won’t. And then, as these things go, the answer comes. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I’m just in this for the sex?"

“Once or twice,” he says, not without humor. “Not anymore.” 

If that was all it was she wouldn't need him any longer. She'd be home. 

Olivia sits up, turns so he’s facing her back, but keeps her eyes trained on him. Her thumb runs over his cheek, down the edge of his jaw. “It’s nothing I can’t deal with, I promise.” 

Peter could laugh at that. From what he’s witnessed, he thinks there’s probably very little out there that Olivia Dunham can’t deal with. Self reliance may as well be the basic tenet of her bible. "If you trusted me, would you tell me?”

“Maybe,” she tells him. 

But she shouldn’t trust him, and she doesn’t, so he leaves it at that.

 

***

 

The water shuts off and the pipes rattle behind the walls, protest at the change with a hollow clank. Olivia steps out of the shower, lets the steam inside the cabin escape behind her, grabs a towel. 

The bathroom is small but the space is well arranged, the fixtures clean though most are yellowed with age, the metal showing rings of rust around the junctures and the edges, adorned here and there with scratches and dents. Row upon row of ceramic tiles cover the floor and the walls, cold as ice beneath her feet, sweating beads of condensed steam. They are all uniformly square but of assorted colours, the range of them like pebbles on a riverbed: from the original sea green, cloudy and fading to a greenish gray, to a polished, dark teal, and skipping through the spectrum between them—all of them signs of renovations and repairs, tokens of the people that have lived here and left.

She wonders how long it will take for Peter to become one of them. It comes up in conversation sometimes, the odd jobs, and the traveling, and all the places he’s been (he says almost as much as he hides, rarely goes into detail, but then they all have secrets, they all have pasts. Olivia has never asked). He’s wandered the world too much and too often to be the kind of guy that sticks around in towns like North of Nowhere, Wisconsin, with murder all around. 

Dropping the towel, already as dry as she’ll get, Olivia looks in the mirror and finds nothing suspicious, no evidence of him on her. No bruises, no bite marks, no scratches, just a tired face that she knows too well, bags under her eyes, and the scrape on her temple from that scuffle with hell-on-wheels the other day (biker gangs are a pest).

There’s an element of possession that’s inherent to sex, a need to brand and mark and claim. Olivia knows this. It has always been true for her, true of past relationships and the men in them. She’s always thought of it as a small price to pay, the little levies of intimacy, of sharing yourself with someone else. It’s why she finds it strange, that he’s always so careful to leave no trace of himself. That he seems to want no claim to her. She would blame the need for secrecy, with John here, but it’s not a new development, he has always been the same. It throws her off balance, leaves her on edge.

With the winter layers she has to wear under the uniform itself it takes her a few minutes longer to get dressed. She comes out with her dress shirt unbuttoned and untucked, half-expecting Peter to still be dozing on the rug.

She tells him as much when she finds him in the kitchen, in dark gray sweatpants and a worn t-shirt with a faded John Coltrane-plus-saxophone across the front, making popcorn on the stove. 

 “What can I say?” Peter shrugs. “I’m a growing boy.”

“Right,” Olivia says, deadpan, trying not to smile. “Shouldn’t Walter be home by now?”

He leans back, craning his neck to look at the time on the microwave door. “No, he’ll be a while. He's taking the night shift at the diner for the next couple of weeks.” 

“I thought he said he liked mornings better.” She only asks after the man to be polite. There is no part of her that feels like going through another lecture on methods to maximize sexual stimulation, thank you very much. 

“Yeah, the last few weeks have been weird around here. Ever since I told him about the children in the lake he keeps having these nightmares…” Peter sighs, runs a hand down his cheek. “I found him in the shower a few days ago, just sitting there under the spray, crying and rocking back and forth, hugging his knees. He was still wearing his pajamas. Scared the shit out of me.”

More and more, tones of worry colour his voice when his father is the focus of his words, like echoes of affection. The anger is still there, the resentment and contempt, they’re all still closest to the surface, still the first to show on the shapes of his body, on the lines of his face, but the range of emotions he reserves for Walter is expanding. He’s learning to care. 

She knows little of madness, but nightmares are companions. “Has he told you what the nightmares are about?”

Peter takes the popcorn off the stove, serves it in a bowl, replaces the pan and reaches into a cupboard, rummages around. He finds the sugar, pours a few spoonfuls in the pan, adds a chunk of butter that screams death by high cholesterol, and lowers the heat. She waits for him to speak. 

“Nightmare, actually,” he says. "Just one. More like a twisted version of a memory. There was...an accident when I was a kid, I must have been seven, maybe eight. We used to have this lake house upstate New York, a place called Reiden Lake, five or six hours from Boston. We’d go there every winter, my mom and I. Walter would usually come visit on holidays and weekends, he spent the rest of the time working in the city. Anyway, that winter Walter came early, I was sick, I think— there's very little of the memory left in my head. So he came, and for some reason he took me with him when he went into town to get the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. A blizzard caught us on the way back, drove us off the road. I don't know how it happened but I got thrown out of the car and the ice over the lake was still thin enough that it broke under my weight. Walter…Walter dived in after me, got me out. He dreams that I died, that he couldn’t reach me in time, and I drowned.”

“You think he took the shift because he's afraid of going to sleep,” she says.

Peter shakes his head, turns around to lean back on the counter. “I don’t know what to think. It’s like he's afraid I'll really be dead when he wakes up next time."

Silence fills the room, covers it like a blanket. The seconds drag, turn into minutes. There is nothing else she can say. Peter moves to the fridge, scans its contents before grabbing a beer, and later, after a moment’s deliberation, a second one. Wordlessly, he offers it to her. Olivia stares at him, at the drop of his shoulders, the tired line of his spine. She nods. He opens the bottles against the edge of the counter, slaps the caps off with the heel of his palm.

Olivia drinks. 

He resumes his position at the counter, and she can feel his eyes on her, dragging up her legs to her face, to the bottle at her lips. She sets the bottle on the table, raises an eyebrow at him.

Peter grins, but it’s slow, soft. The look on his face is not at all that little leer of his, the one she was expecting; it's more bemused than anything. He looks away, takes a swig from his beer. His eyes end up at her hands, stay there for a long time. He brushes his fingertips over the small bruises on her knuckles, over the skin-warm metal of her wedding ring. Olivia tenses but doesn’t move away, waits to see if he’ll do anything else. 

“You know,” he says, “most people having an affair take this off.”

“Does it bother you?” 

“No,” he shakes his head, still smiling slightly. “Should it bother me?”

“No... I just didn't think you'd appreciate the reminder." 

“Reminder of what? That you feel better here than you do around the guy who wears the matching band? I think my _fragile_ ego can handle that.” He takes his hand away, moves to check the contents of the pan, finds the butter mostly melted and the sugar mostly liquid, blending unevenly with it. He turns the heat up a notch. 

The truth of his words hurts more than she would have thought (she never imagined she’d end up here, like this). When she remains silent, he turns to her, says, “I don’t really subscribe to the social implication of ownership that goes with giving rings to people, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Olivia looks away, scratches at the edges of the wet label on the beer with her fingernails, kept short to avoid unnecessary injuries at work. It isn’t that. “I always thought more of it as a sign of commitment. Like a badge.”

“Sure, but why do cops wear badges?” he says, wooden spoon in hand. “It’s an announcement; it’s for people to know they have the authority, the power to do their jobs. A cop stops being a cop if you take his badge away, because the badge is the power. Do you stop being married if you take the ring off? Wedding rings are sold as the symbol of a promise you make to someone else, so, if the marriage is the promise and the ring the symbol of the promise, then if the promise is broken it stands, logically speaking, that the marriage is voided, but the ring doesn’t change. And it doesn’t change because it’s not meant for the couple, it’s meant for everyone but them. It denotes ownership, keeps other people away because it communicates that you belong to someone else.” He scoffs. After a moment, he says, softer, “You belong _with_ the people you love, you don’t belong _to_ anyone but yourself.”

Olivia frowns. He has a way of complicating things, an abhorrence for simplicity. There’s always more to the things than he lets himself say, like every word has been measured and weighed. “I’m not sure if that’s cynical or romantic of you,” she says. She’s not ready to acknowledge anything more. 

“Those two aren't always mutually exclusive, you know,” he says under his breath, and then the caramel is done and Peter turns the stove off. The melted sugar looks a dark amber in the light, hot enough to burn, and he’s pouring it over the popcorn, shaking the bowl so every kernel gets a turn. 

“You do this often?” she asks. The question has been brewing in the back of her mind. 

“What, popcorn?” 

“Married women.”

“No,” he chuckles, rubbing at the back of his neck. A nervous gesture. “I try to avoid it, most of the time.”

There’s something wrong with her, she’s sure—has been for so long that she rarely pauses on the thought anymore—but the unease of his posture, if not his voice, is reassuring. He’s good with people, full of sarcasm and easy smiles, so confident about everything that he borders on arrogant most of the time, and she relishes the chance at catching him off guard, seeing him drop the act. It doesn't happen often, certainly not with other people about. 

“So why didn't you?" She asks. "What changed?” 

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I’m just in this for the sex?”

Olivia laughs. “Yeah. All the time.”

 

***

 

Peter watches her leave, shivering in the doorway in the cold, howling wind, and falling snow. He watches the sway of her hips as she climbs down the stairs, approaches her car. Her figure, pale in the night, seems ethereal outlined only in streetlight, with snowflakes drifting down around her in slow-motion hurricanes of white, piling up on the sidewalks, melting on the salted asphalt.

It’s not something he’s comfortable admitting, but he’s going to miss her. He’s going to miss the dry humor and the razor sharp wit, the press of her body on his, the warmth of her in the driver’s seat beside him as they make their rounds around town. 

By the end of the week he’ll just be a made-up name on the records and a face for her to forget. He’s just a fling; it shouldn’t be hard. 

The patrol car, painted white, a thick, powder-blue stripe outlined in gold on either side the only thing to separate it from the landscape, reverses out into the street, shifts gears, takes a left, and disappears. 

Back inside the apartment, the door shutting after him with a muted thud and a click, he systematically removes the jacket, scarf, gloves and socks he wore just to step outside and see her off, and still feels as though he might freeze on the spot if he stays still long enough. Winter-Fucking-Wonderland out there forgot to take note of the clothes.

In the kitchen, he picks up the bowl of half-eaten popcorn and the last of his lager off the counter, throws her empty bottle in with the bunch piling up under the sink, waiting for Walter to recycle them or cut them apart to use as makeshift beakers and funnels and flasks. 

A voice in the back of his mind repeats her question, over and over, without respite: _Why didn’t you? What changed?_

The answer he has is not one she’d believe. By itself it’s shallow, the kind of thing she’d refuse to accept as anything other than more of his bullshit. It’s a question of his own, one he can’t frame in a way that makes explicit everything he can’t articulate well enough for her to get the meaning beyond the words. 

_Have you looked in the mirror, lately?_

 

***

 

John is asleep when she gets home.

With all the lights off and the blinds closed and the curtains drawn, it’s darker inside the apartment than out in the street. Quiet, but not the kind of quiet begotten of solitude, of being in a room and hearing nothing but the sound of your breathing, the rush of your blood, the hum of your thoughts. Not the quiet of stillness either. She’s familiar with those, has never allowed herself to unlearn them. 

No, this is different. 

This is the walls holding their breath, watching, waiting, like Olivia is waiting. For the right time, for a fault in the plan. For the proof she needs, visible, tactile, inevitable and undeniable, and for the moment, just out of reach. 

She leans her weight on the door, lets her head fall back with a thump. She sighs, and her sigh dissolves in the air, too loud for those small seconds before the waves disperse and the sound of the wind tunneling through the low buildings and the trees is all that remains. 

Driving home felt like rolling into the first few minutes of a TCM rerun of some generic ’40s noir. The kind that she’s probably caught bits and pieces of, but never fully watched, a thousand times, if only because November has turned the town palette to grayscale, with the near-ceaseless snowing and the stretching of night.

Olivia drops her bag on the couch, doesn’t bother to bend down to take her boots off, does it with her toes. She gets rid of the hat and the scarf and the coat, checks the locks. Sheds her brown and tan uniform as she goes, folds it over her arm to minimize the creases and the dust.

Inside her bedroom, she exchanges her winter layers for an old t-shirt, soft from washing, patriot blue faded, collar frayed, her only left-over from Quantico. She wears the shirt and not a stitch more—John has always slept warm, and winter or not she’d rather not sweat through her clothes during the night. 

Her gun, chamber emptied and magazine unloaded, finds its place on the nightstand beside the star of her badge and the black-plastic, red-number clock set to go off in fewer hours than would be advisable for someone with her job. 

The mattress shifts under her weight as she slips into bed, and John grumbles awake, rolls over to pull her to his chest without opening his eyes enough to look at her. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You’re tired,” she murmurs, hand running down the heavy forearm around her waist, displacing thick golden hair along the way, wondering when it was that she forgot the feeling of his weight, the solidity of him against her. 

“Hmmm, and I hate it. I hate Germany. Your job, my job, being away half the time…I hate it all.” His forehead comes to rest against the curve of her shoulder, up the side of her neck, the way it has always done. It is comforting and familiar, and Olivia aches, wishes for ignorance to reassert itself. Wishes she’d never heard the hollow echo of her steps on the corner tile of their bathroom floor, far to the left, by the tub. 

“You showered,” he says, his nose in her damp hair. “Did I sleep through that too?”

“Wasn't here. I went to the pool after work.”

“Long day, huh?”

“Very. This case is going nowhere,” she tells him. 

“What’s the case again?”

“A series of murders,” Olivia says, intending to speak no more of it, at first, then remembering the vacant eyes in swollen faces, the broken necks and smashed skulls and stabbed lungs, and the rotten smell of innocents dead. Remembering the files, the pictures, the diagrams. The smaller envelope inside, holding things that hurt her, cut old wounds open with a nail clipper, poured some lemon juice in. All the lies he’s told, all the secrets he’s kept. She sees an opening to test him, and she takes it. “Bodies we keep finding by the lake that have no connection to each other except the place they were found, and three nail markings stabbed into their palates.”

“Nail markings? More ritual killings, you think?” 

“No, there’s been no match on cause of death, and aside from the markings there are no specific characteristics that the victims share. There’s nothing.”

“But you are thinking something. You got a theory?” They used to work together. He is familiar with her habits, her thought patterns. He knew her well. At some point, he knew her best. 

“Not really,” Olivia chuckles. “The closest I came to one was that the military was doing some sort of testing at the base that came out wrong, using the fame of the lake to get rid of the bodies.”

“Experiments on people?” John laughs, and to her ears it sounds forced. “You’ve been spending too much time with Lane.”

“He does love a good conspiracy theory.”

He sighs, rubs her arm, yawning behind her. “It’ll get solved. Give it time.”

“I hope so,” she says. 

“Give it time,” he repeats. “Sleep.”

It’s strange, to finally have him here after so long and want him gone, to not feel safe in his presence, to doubt his every gesture, his every word. She’s come to wonder what she means to him, if she’s a project he simply got attached to and was allowed to keep. 

Daily, she wonders how he lives with the lies, what he tells himself to justify them, how he sleeps so calmly every night. She could do with some pointers. No matter what she tries, she still can’t.

 

***

 

“Dunham, keys!” Peter shouts, locomotive breathing fading out of hearing as he falls behind, still dazed by the wild shot that would have landed him dead had she not pushed him away, dazed by the following crash down the stairs. 

Olivia fishes the car keys from her pocket, throws them back over her shoulder without sparing them a glance. She cuts the corner, breathing knives into her lungs. Her legs are burning. The ground is slippery, iced over. Discarded mattresses, broken TV screens and house appliances line the alley. The snow on the ground only makes moving harder. 

Doyle, their witness, their suspect, runs ahead, shirtless, boots unlaced. The gray skies make the falling snowflakes look like ash, like the town burnt down during the night, and they’re playing hide-and-seek amongst the ruins of the places they lived in, the remnants of all they ever built.

Stop, aim, and shoot. That’s what training says to do, but Olivia doesn’t trust her aim not to hit him square in the chest, not to miss him entirely. It is not a chance she’s willing to take. She pushes on instead, pushes harder, faster, lets adrenaline control the race. For a moment, it is impossible to tell if it’s the brick walls and the wooden stairs and the rusting, green dumpsters that speed up as they pass her by, or if it’s her accelerating, gaining ground. Either way she hunts him down, moves when he moves, sprints and ducks and jumps in the same places he does, cuts the distance between them by half. 

Keeping him in focus while in motion feels a lot like tunnel vision—the edges vignette, attract the eye to the lighter spot, at the center of the picture. The details that fill in the world peripherally cease to matter, and so they cease to be, blur and disappear. 

Vaguely, she becomes aware of the blaring of a siren a block away.

A backdoor opens, up the alley, and Doyle dashes forward, dives inside. Olivia goes right after him, doesn’t think twice about it. A waking kitchen greets her, a handful of men and women in greasy white aprons and greasy white caps that shout expletives as the chase moves into their space, disrupts their working place and forces them to scramble to the sides. 

Doyle reaches the double doors at the far side of the room, throws them open to briefly reveal a restaurant empty of people, filled only with formica tables covered in upended chairs, and checkerboard floors half-hidden under stains of old dampness and dust. Gold-and-ochre wallpaper fades to a dull brown on the walls, peels back at the corners. 

She gets to the doors as they swing back towards her, meets the impact with her forearm and the ball of her shoulder, ignores the sharp, blooming pain as she navigates the layout of the tables to the entrance. Doyle flips a table over, chairs and all, hurtles through the front door— the kind with a brass bell attached on top— and into the street, making use of the lack of traffic to run down the middle of it. 

Without pause, she passes the chairs, jumps over the table, follows him still. The door is not even closed when she steps through onto the sidewalk and the street beyond. 

The moment her boots hit the pavement the siren comes back, louder this time. Coming closer. Olivia understands then, more or less, can’t help the smirk that makes its way to her face. Panting, swallowing air, she forces herself to slow down, look out. Wait. 

Her patrol car shoots out of the alley up ahead, trapping Doyle between it and her, leaving oil-black tire tracks behind as it skids over the curve and speeds towards them. The suspect doesn’t stop, but the car does, turning violently sideways and breaking dryly, barricading the street, forcing the half-naked criminal to jump and slide over the roof. 

Before he’s made it all the way across the vehicle, Peter jumps out of the driver's door, grabs his pants and hauls him ass-first to the ground. The car obstructs her line of sight, but the yelp and then the thud of Doyle’s body hitting asphalt is more satisfying than she would have thought only minutes ago. 

Olivia reaches them seconds after, jogging more than running now, red faced, pressing on her shoulder with the opposite hand to massage the pain away. The suspect is on his stomach, Peter sitting on his back and handcuffing his hands with an expression as full of glee as she’s ever seen on him. 

She steps on the criminal’s winter-red back, leans down. “Alfred Doyle? You’re under arrest.”

The moment she takes her foot away, Peter yanks at the handcuffs, pulls the man to his feet and reads him his rights  before shoving him into the cage in the back of the car. His split eyebrow has already bled through the bandage he must have slapped on the moment he reached the car, leaving a trail down the side of his face, adorning his collar with a few fat drops of red. 

She notices the keys in the ignition, switches off the noise. The sudden absence is rattling, the almost eerie silence close enough to what she imagines it might feel like to go deaf after a lifetime of hearing. “Was the siren really necessary?”

Peter moves to the passenger side, speaks to her over the roof. “Necessary? Nah. But don’t tell me it wasn’t awesome.”

“How old are you again?”

His eyebrows rise enough to touch the knit hat topping his head; the smirk from before becomes a wolfish grin, teeth and all; his voice drops. “Old enough.” 

Olivia snorts, rolls her eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

 

***

 

To no one’s surprise, Doyle is anything but helpful. 

Peter leans against the back wall, busies himself with the coffee maker, fades into the background. He holds an icepack to his temple and watches the action play out. All the memories he has of rooms like this have, by this point, bled into each other, melded into one indistinct experience he would rather not repeat. The procedure is familiar. The way Olivia handles everything is not. 

“What am I here for?” Doyle asks, drug-thin and shaky, belligerent. Probably itching for his next fix. “What are you chargin’ me with? I got a right to know.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “You mean other than shooting at a Deputy, and obstructing a murder investigation?” 

“No, no, you got the wrong guy, lady. I didn’t kill anybody. And I don’t see a star anywhere on his person.” 

“Shooting at people is still a crime, Mr. Doyle, independent of them carrying a badge or not,” Olivia says. “But let’s say I believe you. Let’s say you didn’t kill anyone. The charges for possession and distribution of narcotics would still allow me to hold you here, until such time as the deputies sent to your apartment finish searching it completely, and report back to me. The way I see it, it’s a gamble. How much do you want to bet on them not finding anything?”

Doyle balks, pushes away from the table as far as he can. “I-I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

Olivia purses her lips, nods minutely. Every expression that gives shape to the arrangement of her features is controlled, has a purpose. She is toying with him, like a cat with a ball of yarn, spinning him around and around, waiting for his nerves to snap. 

It crosses Peter’s mind, not for the first time, that she’d be a hell of a con, if she decided to switch career paths, come over to the dark side (he really shouldn’t have let Walter drag him into that Star Wars rerun the other night). 

“I think you do, Mr. Doyle,” Olivia says. “I think you know that those odds I was talking about are not in your favor. I think you know that, unless you give me what I want, you’re looking at an awful lot of time behind bars in your near future. Three to five years, depending on what we find. You’ve done time before, you know what it’s like to be inside. You know what it’s like to have to sleep with one eye open, to not be able to let your guard down. Do you really want to leave something like that to chance?”

“What do you want?” 

“Just for you to answer a few questions. As I’m sure you’re aware, there have been a number of bodies found around the lake these past few months. I have a half-dozen witness accounts, from your clients mostly, placing you at the crime scene on November the 13th. Can you confirm that you were there?”

“That was…was that Monday?”

“Saturday. Were you there, yes or no?”

“I was there,” Doyle says. “But it was just business. Sales. I didn’t kill anyone. I _didn’t._ ” There’s a desperation to his words that makes Peter think he might not be so sure of their veracity, like he’s trying harder to convince himself than them. A drug dealer with a conscience. Cute. 

Now that she’s got him talking, Olivia cuts to the chase. She opens the folder on the table, slides a photograph out. “While you were there, did you see this woman?” 

Doyle wrings his hands, phalanges functional yet slightly misshapen, oddly scarred. He picks at the wounds around chewed fingernails, makes them worse with his thumb. Peter sees a flash of fear the moment Doyle glances at the picture, feels the sudden panic sparking in the air. The words uttered next put an end to the spinning, remind them all of their place. 

It’s the curse of law enforcers, that it is often only the law itself that stands in their way. 

“I-I want a lawyer,” Doyle stutters. Then, more firmly, “I won’t answer anything without a lawyer.” The handcuffs rattle and click around his wrists. 

The coffee’s done.

In her metal chair, sitting, spine ramrod straight, Olivia appears unfazed. She puts the victim’s photograph back in the folder with theatrical care, pushes the whole file aside. Her quiet competence in the face of failure is impressive. “That'll take some time, Mr. Doyle. Unless you've got a number ready?” She stands. 

“I can wait,” Doyle says. He has the gall to smile in relief as she turns away, and that clinches it. _This won’t do._

Peter sighs. He gets a pair of cups, fills them nearly to the brim. He sets one down on the small table beside him, drops a sugar cube in the one still in his hand. He hands it to her when she reaches him, acknowledges her quiet thanks with a nod. “Now what?” 

“Now we wait,” she says. “I wasn’t kidding when I said the lawyer would take time.” To her credit, it is only now, standing close, that the bone-deep weariness shows; the disappointment. 

He thought as much. 

If the past few months have taught him anything, it’s that self-flagellation is a nasty habit— one that Olivia seems to excel at. One that demands that she take the blame for every crime, real or imagined, that passes through her hands in the form of pictures and corpses and files. That she bleed for the victims until she finds the closure they need, the closure they lack. He’s gotten used to that, case after case (you’d be surprised at the amount of shit a small town sees, amazed at the depravity), but this one is different. 

It weighs on her, won’t let her breathe easy, or take a rest. Though the reasons escape him, Peter knows: this one is _more_. 

Seven months ago he’d have cited the oxford definition for ‘savior complex’, called it stupid and moved on. Now…well, maybe he’s more of a masochist than previously thought. “Do me a favor. Give me five minutes with him.”

"What?"

"Trust me. Five minutes. You can go back to being suspicious after, I promise.”

Olivia looks at him long and hard— long enough that he’d shuffle his feet if he were another man— weighing, judging all the while. In the end, she doesn’t seem to find him wanting. “Okay,” she says, and the door clicks shut and locks behind her.

It is as good as permission, though he doubts she’d be so easy to convince if she knew what’s coming next. He will ask forgiveness later, maybe, if there is time. 

Peter grabs his coffee cup and approaches the seat she vacated, but doesn’t take it. He takes a sip, leans against the edge of the table, offers it up. “You want some? Best cup of coffee you won't have to pay for. Calibrated the machine myself a couple months ago.”

“Uh, sure,” Doyle says, confusion plain on his face. The nervous mouth, the flickering, bloodshot eyes. It's all so expressive. So easy to read. 

She’d not misjudged him. She just didn't count on him learning from the past. A few beatings will do that. By the look of it, broken fingers teach lessons better than words. It must be hard, he supposes, to reach your weekly quota when you’re shoving half the product up your nose. Dealers always answer to someone. Often, they pay in blood. 

"Here,” Peter says, extending the coffee cup before him. “Take mine.”

It only takes a downwards flick of his wrist, a thrust of his elbow, and the cup’s contents find a home on Doyle’s face, his hair, the top of the orange Lumber County inmate shirt they put on him when they arrived. His pale flesh reddens and burns. It’s disorienting, and will probably be painful for the next couple of hours, but ultimately harmless. 

Doyle throws himself backwards on reflex. Without the drugs— because of the drugs— he’s too slow for the coffee, too fast for his chair. He doesn’t know that his nervous responses have become deficient, that sober, in the absence of adrenaline, his reflexes are all but gone. Peter lunges forward as the chair wobbles on its hind legs, grabs the chain of his handcuffs and pulls him forward, presses his hands flat against the tabletop. 

“You’re a man of few words, aren’t you?” Peter upends the mug, sets it down on the table. “You don’t seem too keen on answers yet, so here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to speak, and you’re going to listen. Nod if you understand.”

Doyle nods. 

“Good.” Peter takes a hold of the vacant chair, turns it around, straddles it. “Now, I’m going to tell you a story. It's kind of a metaphor; let me know if you’ve heard it before. So. It’s back in the thirties; this guy, this psychologist, his name was Skinner, he liked studying people, their habits. He was particularly fond of the idea that what we know as free will is actually an illusion. That every decision you and I make, every particular action we carry out, is, in reality, nothing more than a product of the consequences of a previous instance of similar actions. Which, put like that, sounds like a load of bullshit and makes absolutely no sense, but, you know, textbook definitions will do that. Point is: he put a rat in a box. Then, he ran an electric current through the box, and he watched the rat run around, screeching, in pain. Eventually, the rat accidentally hit a lever inside the box, and the current stopped. He did this several times, until the rat understood that hitting the lever meant escaping the pain, and started hitting it without the input of electricity. He called this Escape Learning. Do you see my point? It’s a yes or no question.”

“N-no, sir. I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” Peter says, stands back up. He yanks at the handcuffs. “Here’s a hint: you’re the rat.”

The coffee mug, empty, one of those old, heavy types with a fat rim, a heavy bottom, a perfect ear for a handle , comes crashing down on the last two fingers of Doyle’s left hand, crushing the bones underneath. The scream torn out of his throat alerts the people outside the door, who barge inside, stop cold at the threshold.

Peter doesn’t turn. He presses on. “Did you see her? Did you see the woman on the photograph?”

“Peter! That’s enough!” Olivia. _Fuck_.

“Oh, no.” Peter snarls, meets her eyes. “No, it is not.” Peter raises the cup, presses down on Doyle’s trembling, bleeding hands, just above the knuckles. “Did you see her?”

Only silence meets his question. Silence, and sobs. 

 _Goddammit._ “One.”

“ _Peter._ ”

“Two.”

Doyle, finally. “Stop, stop! Please. I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you anything. _Please_.” There are tears in his eyes, down his face, spit on his chin, blood on his hands. 

Olivia reacts first, terse. “Speak,” she says. 

“I saw…I saw some fucked up shit, man. I got—I got—I got high and I kind of overdid it, and it got really hot, so I was up by the shore, just washing my face with the snow, yeah? Cooling down. And there was this scream, and I’d heard about the murders, so…I started running, and I thought I was running away from it, but I must have heard it wrong or I got turned around somewhere, and I—I saw her. The woman in the picture, I saw her, but she wasn’t—she wasn’t alone. There was someone…something, with her. It was this…this thing covered in slime, crouching over the body…and it was changing, like, like transforming, you know, and I must’ve made some noise or something because the thing got startled and started looking around, and I panicked, man, I hid under the bridge until it was gone. That’s all. I swear to God, that’s all. I didn’t kill her.”

“Thank you, Mr. Doyle, for your co-operation.” Peter sets the mug down, moves away from the table.

Before leaving he stops beside her in the doorway. Olivia stares at him, through him, guarded, closed off. She keeps her hand on her sidearm, says nothing at all. 

He says, “If you can bend the rules enough that a cocaine-fueled hallucination passes for testimony in a Wisconsin court, I think you got yourself a witness.” 

Something like shame crawls up the back of his neck. It holds on.

 

***

 

“‘Not giving a shit about protocol’ just got an extended definition, wouldn’t you say?” Charlie, standing beside her, hands on his belt, looking at Peter. Peter sits back in one of the plastic-and-chrome stackables they keep in the kitchenette, feet up on the edge of Lincoln’s desk. Long legs stretched out, amusement on his face at whatever the other man says, talking to Astrid with that sly smile, a conspiratorial air. Normal. 

Olivia has been trying not to stare. Can’t help but wonder, can’t reconcile the man she just saw in that room with the one she’s spent her days with for the past seven months and counting (the nights much less). Like she’s just been introduced to one of his multiple personalities. The flirt, the lost boy, the torturer. Will the real Peter King please stand up?

The problem is, independent of what he thinks, she does trust him. Implicitly, instinctually, she trusts him. And it scares her. Recent revelations declare her judgment suspect, her instincts lacking and worthless. She’s never before thought of herself as the kind of person that always makes the same mistakes. 

“Um, yeah. About that. I may have sugarcoated a little.”

Charlie raises an eyebrow, looks at her. “A little. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Motions with his head for her to follow him, doesn’t wait for the answer he knows he’s going to get. Of course it won’t happen again. 

Inside his office, the door closed after her, he softens, bids her to sit. “Any progress?”

“Not really.” She shakes her head. “Doyle saw the attack, but I don’t think there’s a single judge out there that would peg him for a reliable witness. He’s pretty drugged up.”

“You know, maybe that’s just what we need. A junkie drug dealer for a witness in a case where the relationship between the victims is nonexistent, the murder weapon changes every time, and the only concrete proof we have is a bunch of engineering diagrams for an impossible creature, signed by the richest man on the planet, found in a secret compartment built beneath the bathroom tiles of the prime investigator’s apartment.” Charlie smiles. “It’s the cherry on top.”

Olivia runs a hand up her forehead, over her hair until she hits her ponytail. She tries to smile. Tries. “Sounds crazy when you say it like that.”

“Ya think?” 

“What are we going to do, Charlie?”

Charlie sighs. “Well, we’ve got a couple of options: namely, we shove it in with the rest of the cold cases and start hiding corpses when they pop up, or, we invite your Fed friends into our backyard, make the national news, and spend another six months chasing ghosts we’re never going to catch. At the end of it all, we find one innocent bastard that was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and we put them in a state prison for a half-dozen murders they didn’t commit. And we keep hiding the corpses, when they pop up.”

She grimaces. “Makes you wonder how often that happens, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The look he gives her is speculative, searching. “We always knew none of this would stand in court, Liv. We knew from the beginning.”

Olivia nods. She’s aware, painfully so. “Knowing doesn’t make it any easier,” she says. 

“How are things on the home front?” The question comes softly, tentative. The topic might as well be riddled with mines, demanding extreme care, never to be directly addressed. John never to be mentioned by name, like it makes any difference. 

“The same,” she says. “Nothing yet. It’s just…getting harder to pretend, I guess.”

Charlie frowns. “You think he knows you’re onto him?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think I know him anymore.” Olivia chuckles. It’s a dark sound, miserable, and mocking. “If I ever did.” 

“Hey. None of this is your fault.”

“But it is, Charlie. Five years. Five years I’ve been married to him, living with him under the same roof, sleeping in the same bed, and I didn't see him for who he was. I wasn't even suspicious. Maybe if I’d caught on sooner those families wouldn’t be mourning the people they lost. Maybe none of this would be happening.”

“Okay, stop. You can’t do this to yourself, Olivia. You can’t take the blame for things you couldn’t possibly control. You’re not responsible for his choices; only yours. And If I hear another word about this I’m putting you on mandatory leave for a week.”

Olivia smiles. Wan, but real. Charlie is the kind of person that doesn't mind the darkness. The home front, as he put it, is not the only place where it's getting harder to pretend. There is something exhausting about having to give the world a smile, but she finds that lacking one in the aftermath of certain comments and at predetermined intervals invites questions, and Olivia remains, so far, ignorant of the answers. “I think you’re about the only person that punishes employees by giving them time off.”

“Not employees,” Charlie says. “Just you.”

“Ooh, I tremble in fear.” 

“Ah. Insubordination. I missed that.”

A moment follows where nothing happens, a silence without awkwardness, where the clock keeps ticking and the only sounds in the room are those outside of it, of Astrid typing and Lincoln joking in his dry, unimpressed tone, and Peter laughing; of cars outside in the street, driving past with the volume turned up loud enough that creatures in interstellar space will hear it in a few dozen light years, a background chorus of klaxons and the screeching of tires.

“Why are you letting me do this?” she asks, looking out the window at the snow still falling, the way it has for three days in a row now; heavily and without respite. 

“Do what?”

“Chase ghosts. Waste time.”

Charlie shrugs. “You’re my best. This office isn’t ready to function without you.”

Olivia ducks her head. “Thank you,” she says, and she knows in that moment (and the knowledge is old, set deep, inscribed in crevices hidden, only newly lit): Charlie Francis is the one person in this office, in this place, that she can be sure of. It occurs to her that the words are inadequate, too small to convey what it means to be on the other end of that kind of faith. 

She’s halfway out the door when he speaks next. “Liv?” She turns to him, questioning. Charlie says, “It can't be easy, letting go of what you love. Maybe you need to waste a little time before you’re ready to get him.”

 

***

 

It’s a slow night at the Eight Ball. Somehow, Thursdays always are.

Something mellow and old and nearly indistinct amid the ambient noise plays on the radio, enveloping conversations, hermetically sealing them at their particular tables. Peter sits at the bar, nursing his second beer, his third shot glass face down and empty, hard liquor intake done for the night. He’s listening to Lincoln, who is sitting beside him, bitching about the crossword, his own beer forgotten, disposable blue Bic held too close to the tip, with three fingers instead of the regular two. Nick, moving back and forth behind the countertop, joins in when he can, throws suggestions around from time to time. 

They’re filling in number twenty-one across, one of the easy ones—clue: ‘The_____Candidate’ (1962 Sinatra movie), answer: ‘Manchurian’— when Astrid swings by, delivers heavenly payment for services rendered , baked to a golden crisp, perfectly round and sliced up into five geometrically perfect, triangular pieces of cherry pie.

The brown box lands in front of him, and she opens it for his regard like an arms dealer revealing the crowning glory of the night. Showing off  to the crime lords, their attending proxies and respective entourage at a midnight auction in some fancy hotel with a shitty mattress, in a shiny neighborhood in the center of a big, bad town. Ask him how he knows to make the comparison. 

Peter can’t help but moan out loud at the sight. The first time he tried one of Astrid’s pies, it’d been a long frozen specimen shoved in in the back corner of the Department's freezer, labeled, in Astrid’s distinctive all-caps sans-serif hand writing: IN CASE OF ALL-NIGHTER, BREAK GLASS.

He’d been as good as gone after the first bite. 

“Whoa, slow down, cowboy,” Astrid says, wide eyed at the frankly (even he’ll admit) barbaric display of hunger with which Peter proceeds to dig in. “You do realize you can take it home, right?”

Peter chews and savors and groans, swallows and breaks off another section of a slice with his fork. “Clearly,” he tells her, between bites, “you have never met my father. The second this baby touches my fridge is the last time I see it. I’d rather have my moment of undiluted pleasure in its entirety if you don’t mind.”

The end of the statement pulls Lincoln up and away from the paper. “Man, no one here doubts Astrid’s culinary magic, but I’m telling you, you need to get out more. Go watch a movie, get laid. That kind of thing.”

“I don’t think you can understand the sanctity of this moment without trying the pie,” Peter says, handing Lincoln a fork he snatches from behind the counter, easily within his reach. “Try the pie.”

So. Lincoln tries the pie. His reaction: “Oh, my God.” 

“Told you,” Peter says. 

Lincoln tries to get the fork in for another bite, fails spectacularly when Peter blocks him entirely with his knife. “Ah ah ah, my pie. Get your own.”

Ignoring the stool to Peter’s left, sipping on a strawberry daiquiri, Astrid mutters, “Children,” rolls her eyes.

“Why does he get a full pie?” Lincoln whines, pushing the thick, ugly frame of his glasses up his nose for the hundredth time.

Peter straightens in his seat, pats Lincoln’s back. “I am a man of many, many talents.”

“Please.” Lincoln snorts. “If you fucked that good you’d do it for money.”

 “Okay, a) who even said anything about fucking; b) I believe in giving; c) it’s like the thing that just happened with the pie— you can’t know unless you’ve tried it, in which case, where was I, how drunk was I, why would you do that to the barman, and are there pictures?”

Astrid, who’s been looking on in amusement, turns to them, expression deadpan but eyes filled with laughter. “Peter fixed my bike, Lincoln," she says, enunciating each word precisely.

“What, like, your _bike_ bike? The _Honda_?”

“Yup.”

“Oh.” It seems to take Lincoln a moment to process. “Well then, I tip my hat to you, sir. A dozen mechanics from here to Madison said it’d be cheaper to buy a new one, and you go and do it for pie.”

Peter shrugs, the side of his fork cutting into another slice. “If you ask me, I made the deal of the century.”

“What deal?” Nick asks, starting another back-and-forth across the length of the bar, working at cleaning up the wet, circular impressions left behind on the counter by glasses long since returned to the dishwasher. His shiny black, short fingernails tap out some rhythm or another as he goes. 

“I’ve been working on bringing the half-dead carcass of Astrid’s old Honda back to life the last couple of weekends, just got paid with the world’s greatest cherry pie. Also, I'm pretty sure your boyfriend is drunk.”

Nick frowns, moving around to better look at Lincoln with a critical eye. “That…is true. Did anyone count how many he’s had? He’s kind of a lightweight.”

“Nicholas, you need to stop with the worry,” Lincoln says, housewife intonation perfected long ago, clearly intended to make fun of himself. “I am not going to puke.”

“I’m not worried,” Nick says, grin dimpled and impish. “You’re good at cleaning up after yourself.”

Astrid sighs beside him. “I think I’m getting cavities. You guys are better than soaps.”

“Not the gay romance we want,” Peter sighs with her, exaggerated, his chin digging into his palm. “But the one we deserve.” 

Astrid laughs, but the door swinging open distracts Lincoln from answering. “Oh, look,” he says instead. “Officer Hardass and Mr. Paint-by-Numbers in the house.”

Peter snorts, hides his smile by rubbing a hand down his cheek. “I wouldn’t let her hear you say that, if I were you,” he advises. And then he looks. 

 

***

 

The first thing she hears over the low, round sounds of 80s rock on the radio, flooding the room through the speakers is Nick chuckling, saying to Peter, “Don’t worry, Olive knows. It’s kind of an old joke.” She approaches the bar with John close behind, his hand on her back.

Slow night. Only three more couples, and another group seated on the booths along the wall and the tables between it and the bar. A lone man, his pale suit and the camera on the seat beside him marking him as a tourist, sits in the corner booth picking at a bowl of chili fries, drinking a beer. The chatter mixes in with the music as her ears adapt, becomes a faint hum of white noise cushioning the very edge of her perception, auditory input indistinct without attention. It simply bounces off.

Peter's eyes fix on her for a too-long number of seconds before they flick away, and a confused smile replaces that momentarily indecipherable expression that met her upon entering, fades into his regular quasi-permanent smirk. She can see the gears shift, the way he assumes conscious control of himself, of everything he intends on projecting; what to onlookers would be imperceptible, she catches in the fraction of the second it takes to happen, by now used to his face, to most of the arrangements of his features, if never quite their reasons. 

To also be aware of those, Olivia suspects, would require a lifetime. She doubts there is anyone with enough time for that particular task.

“Know what?” she asks when she comes close enough, eyebrow raised inquisitively, looking at them both, looking at neither. 

Nick grins, the age old delight of being in her vicinity lighting up the back of his eyes. “The mysteries of the universe. What else?”

“Right.”

Lincoln waves at her, shakes John’s hand. “Boss,” he says. “Mr. Dunham.”

“Lincoln.” John rolls his eyes. They’ve always called him that.

She’d asked him once, at the very beginning, if it chafed that she’d preferred not to take his name, unsure whether or not he’d taken it as reticence, as offense. He’d chuckled, playing with her ring, making it spin on her finger. He’d said no. He’d said, ‘I know exactly who I married.’ She’d been glad then.

Now, Olivia wishes she’d had the mind to make sure the knowledge was mutual. 

Where she is concerned, joy has always been rare, has always been blinding. Better not to have it, so as to not miss its absence. Joy takes her anger away, divests her of the protection it offers, lays her bare. Makes her vulnerableBetter to avoid that kind of danger. It's the kind of thing she used to tell herself, before John happened. With him, she resolved it would be different. She risked it all. Liked it.

Now she sees where it got her. Sees where it left her. Sees how it hurts.

Nick says, “You having a drink now or later?”

“Maybe later,” she tells him. 

What does it say about her, that she can go about her day feeling like a pariah, a smile too much to give, guilt a price too steep for deception, deception a price too steep for relief? What does it say about her, that no one notices, no one says a thing?

It must be her winning personality. She’s certainly a better liar than most.

One of their phones rings. Astrid’s. “And that, gentlemen, is my cue.” She raises the phone for them to see the text message lighting up the screen, Frank's picture distinctive on caller I.D, his eyes closed in sleep. They’ve been going through an ‘on’ phase lately—theirs is the most casual of relationships. “I’m afraid my presence is requested elsewhere.” 

 _Good for them_ , Olivia thinks.

“Say hi to Dr. Frankenstaton for me,” Lincoln says. “And his glutes,” comes later, a flirtatious addendum. 

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Is he drunk?” The question is pointedly thrown at Nick with a turn of her head, the hint of a smirk. 

Nick shrugs. “I’m his boyfriend, not his babysitter. You guys go ahead and pick a table, I’ll be by later to take your orders and stuff.”

“Julie out?” 

“Yeah, no, there’s a birthday party at the bowling alley. Sam’s got her helping over there.”

It’s not unusual, so Olivia nods in understanding. They seem to be working well together--certainly better than she expected. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees John turn from Lincoln to Peter. From where she stands beside him, she can feel the scrutiny, the way John forms his first judgment of the man before him with a single glance. She and John were partners once, before they were anything else—she knows his thought patterns just as well as he does hers. Or used to, in any case (but did she? That is always the question). 

“So you're the trainee,” John says, putting his hand out for the other man to shake. 

Peter takes it. It’s a firm handshake, but not too firm. Not a pissing contest, at least not to him. Peter retreats. “That’s me,” he drawls in that way of his. “Peter King.” 

Oh, it’s going to be an interesting night.

 

*** 

 

The single pool table at the Eight Ball is a relic. Its legs are carved with knots and serpents, Germanic in their blocky shapes, their hard edges; the wood is dark, the clear varnish peeling in places; the green baize of the bed shows beer stains beside two of the six pockets along its edges. 

“So, Peter.” John Scott leans over the table, puts ball number thirteen at the other end of his body’s line of attack, cue ball pointing to it like the golden bead on a gun’s sights, cue pulled back. He calls the side pocket on the right. “How are you finding Lakeside?” 

Peter snickers, his chin resting on his hands, his hands resting on top of the leather tip of the cue he was more or less forced to pick up. Something about an unfinished game, Lincoln being incapacitated and Nick's duties clearly rendering him unable to play. "It’s a nice little creep show,” he says. “That is, assuming you want an answer that amounts to more than _cold-as-fuck_. Because that much is obvious, right?”

Pool is just physics, straightforward movement, friction and angles and forces. Naturally, it is something that Peter is fairly good at. This game, however, the one they’re really playing? This is a game he excels at. 

It wasn’t hard to get a measure of the man. A poster boy for the Marines, if Peter’s ever seen one; square jawed and stocky, clean-shaven, clear eyed and buzz-cut. It took all of two seconds to realize that John Scott’s got an extra cue shoved up his ass, covetous eyes for his own wife, and a need for dominance only consciously smothered to make way for a conman’s placid smile. Trust him on this: it takes one to know one. 

He’s not one to judge. Everybody lies, at some point.

The other man laughs. “I know exactly what you mean. And the job, how’re you liking that? I hope Liv’s not cracking the whip too hard on you so far.” He winks at Olivia beside him, and she’s watching the game—both of them—waiting for her turn at the table, cue flat on the rail she’s leaning her hands against. She rolls her eyes. 

Peter forces a smirk, looking back at the playing field before him, picking solid red number 3 and angling himself to make it bounce against the cushions, pushing yellow number 1 over into the corner pocket to the far right. “Nah, it’s okay. Pay could be better, but it’s definitely more interesting than fixing the pin spotters for Sam after every short. Besides, I can take a whipping. Right, boss?”

Olivia looks at him for a moment with steely eyes, then tilts her head to the side, lets the edges of her mouth curl up. Picks up her cue. “You could always whine a little less,” she says.

“A double Johnnie and a Jameson on the rocks.” Nick interrupts, appearing by the table as if from thin air with a round metallic tray, depositing the lowball glasses by Olivia’s elbow on the rail. “First round’s on the house.”

“What’s the occasion?” Olivia smiles at the bartender, her expression puzzled yet pleased, the smile exactly like the one she—unconsciously, possibly—reserves for post-coital activities. 

“Consider it my welcome home present for the prodigal husband.”

John raises his glass to Nick, says, “Never change, Lane.”

“Really?” Nick steps closer to John, until there’s maybe a couple of inches between them. He raises an eyebrow, and he looks so like Olivia right then that they could tell him tomorrow that they were siblings all along and Peter would take it for truth, wouldn’t even consider asking for proof. “I thought you said you liked the panties,” he mock-whispers. They all hear it. 

“You know what?” Scott folds a bill into the breast pocket of Nick’s black, pressed, lint-free vest, and gives him a little push on the shoulder so he’ll step back, away from his face. “Go get me the second round.” 

Nick grins, and the expression looks manic and pleased. “Ah, tips, they multiply!” he raises his arms and wiggles his fingers at the ceiling as he retreats. 

Scott leans his cue against the table, excuses himself and heads to the restroom. “Don’t miss me too much.” 

Olivia shakes her head, mouth still stuck in some limbo between a smile and a straight line, and rotates around the table, looking for her move. There are rules in cutthroat pool, but they've dispensed with them all beyond the distribution of the numbers and balls. Still, they strategize like someone is actually keeping the score. 

When she crosses in front of him, Peter gives her space, but follows her motion with his own. “Are they always like this?”

“Uh, yeah,” Olivia says, not looking at him. “Pretty much.”

She’s uncomfortable, clearly, though she only lets him see it when they intersect, before he retreats from her space and she leans forward, choosing her spot. Peter steps back, tries for something light. “This town is better than the circus.”

Her eyes flick to him, evaluating, moving from curiosity to something like wonder, only dimmer, lonelier. “I’ll take your word on that.”

“You’ve never been to the circus?”

Olivia shakes her head, hitting the cue ball hard and the cue ball hitting a blue-striped 10, pocketing it with a thump at the end. “Never had the time.”

“That’s what you get for marrying the job,” Peter says. It’s meant as a joke, innocuous, a throwaway line to fill the air between them, maybe make her smile. 

It’s not received like one.

“Yeah…” she says, and it’s more a whisper to herself than an actual reply. She stands up straight, pauses a second, then reaches for her drink on the rail at the other end of the table. 

Something flickers over her expression, too quick for him to catch, to assign a meaning to, to understand. But he doesn’t miss the way her eyes skip to John’s back as she replies. 

 

***

 

In the still, undisturbed darkness of the room, the slow, even tempo of the breathing of the man she married changes its tune. It is a deliberately slow process as he makes a show of dragging himself fully to wakefulness, just in case, and Olivia makes an effort not to tense, not to jump out of the bed, not to give the game away. 

The shackle of his weight lifts, slowly rolls away, and she can feel, as she fakes sleep, his eyes on her back making sure it is safe to retreat. The whisper of sheets on skin communicates the aim of his motion; the mattress dips on the opposite end of the bed as he swings his legs over the side and sits up. John stands, dresses, picks up his cellphone, his keys. 

He leaves. 

The deadbolt on the front door hitting home, locking shut once more, signals ‘go’—Olivia reacts (she can’t think). She throws the comforter off her, feels the cool air dry the night’s sweat along the knobs of her spine, the backs of her thighs. She slips her clothes on in a rush, picking them up from the places they landed earlier, all over the floor. He’d been eager to get her naked when they got home. 

The Glock is heavy on her hip when she clips the holster on, slides it all the way to the right for a quick draw. Having it near makes breathing easier. The cold, seven pointed gold of her badge, just as familiar on her hip, follows close behind. She shoves her arms into her coat, found haphazardly strewn across the back of the couch with her smoke gray scarf (diamond dots scattered in pale green from end to end, a gift from Nick years ago, low-key) conveniently folded within, pulls her hair out of the way and all but runs out the door. 

He’s easy to track, with all the snow piling up on the sidewalk now marred by his steps, by the distinctive weight of his gait. She has grown used to telling the freshness of footprints from looking at the depth of the impressions, the neatness of the edges. The weather itself trains you if you pay attention, if you look long enough at its patterns and its textures. She knows the pattern on the sole of his boots, a soft leather pair he’s had forever, wool lining a pale beige on the inside, the warmest he owns—and isn’t it funny, all the little details she can recall, all the things she was always aware of, the efficacy with which she remembers banalities? To think that all the while she was unaware of the man himself. Some detective.

The footprints are cautious. They take her through back alleys littered with garbage under the snow, newspapers and bottles and cans, and stretches of broken glass beneath the town-wide layer of frozen white; they circle back in places, blur in others where he drags his feet and kicks the snow off instead of stepping on it. She follows them until she can’t, until she reaches bare, wet cobblestones relatively protected from the weather by a pair of overhangs from the buildings standing guard on either side, where the snow becomes little more than a smattering of pale frost along the edges between cobblestone and brick. The trail stops then, comes abruptly to an end. 

From there on, she follows sound, follows the echo of his footsteps on the wet ground. 

Olivia has never enjoyed hunting—killing, for pay, for sport, or in self-defense, independent of the animal, is not an activity she finds attractive; at thirty-one, she’s done enough of it to last her a separate lifetime. But there’s a lot to be said for the skills required to be effective at it. 

It doesn’t take all that long to find him. The cobblestones turn a corner at the end of the alley, around the back of a squat apartment building graffitied to death, ground leveled at a descending angle. The descent is clearly premeditated—this land, most of it, naturally, is as flat as a cow’s backside— made to lead into what she later finds to be a steep and very narrow stone staircase, and, down at the bottom, the entrance to a basement of sorts, where he stops in front a heavy, gunmetal door. 

As she watches, breath held, trepidation increasing, John unlocks the door with a set of keys she has never seen, drags it open with a screech. The keyring, on a bowling pin keychain, loops through the bows of keys silver, and old, stained brass, and gold. He steps down into the room behind the door, pitch-black and damp with months of disuse.

Olivia retraces her steps, finds the air vents bolted to the bottom edge of the building’s façade, where she noticed them earlier in passing. The grills, exposed to the elements, are frozen, red-rusted surfaces, the gaps in between giving her a limited top-down view of the scene when she crouches low enough that she’s able to see. He’s turned the light on. 

The lamp, a pair of fluorescent tube light bulbs hanging precariously from a beam, swings dangerously from side to side. There’s a click click click as the gas inside lamp heats up and reacts , and the lights reach their maximum capacity, illuminate the space enough for the human eye, reveal a shabby storage room but don’t dispel the shadows entirely, only push them back. Old dust swirls before her eyes, displaced, lit up.

The walls of the room, red, worn down expanses of kiln-fired brick with dark mortar in between, are lined on the far right and the space below the vents with generic plastic shelves and generic plastic storage bins. A green metallic cabinet hunkers by the door, to the left. An ancient wooden desk, bent out of shape with age and the seasonal humidity change, surface bare but for the dust occupies the corner beside the archive, serves as the juncture between it and its cheap, hardware store bought, twenty-first century brethren.

It’s the wall directly ahead of her vantage point that takes the breath from her lungs with all the grace of a punch to the gut. 

This is what betrayal feels like (and yes, before you ask, she is perfectly aware of the hypocrisy in that. Awareness changes exactly nothing. It does not change the way the knowledge burns in her chest, the way it makes her hands shake, her jaw clench, her lips tremble. A physical ache, it seems to be a weakness she can’t dispel, however much she wants to). This is the reality of it, as corporeal as the ring on her finger, his sweat on her skin, the ghost of his breath on the back of her neck, the bite marks on her collarbone, the crest of her hip. For months, it has been a suspicion, a series of hypotheses unsubstantiated beyond the cache of documents under the bathroom tiles, and the bodies littering the sand. All of it circumstantial at best; another case without evidence.

Here is her proof. 

On the wall, a cork board smothered in newspaper clippings and surveillance pictures, pinned and joined to each other by multicolored lengths of string crisscrossing between them, depicts the makings of a conspiracy. 

The photographs are arranged in a semi-circular pattern, the colors of the string differing dependent on the subject’s proximity to the beveled, isometric projection of Massive Dynamic’s black-and-white M, reigning over the center (but of course, what was she thinking? It’s not a conspiracy without an evil corporation to blame. From this point on, the author writing her tragedy is advised to call it quits or come up with something better already. The audience knows what comes next, it never changes). 

She’s the subject of some of them, but then she knew that already. Angles of her shape, close-ups and full-body frames taken at different times, in different places, make up a cluster on the top right corner. Below her, one of the three faces she recognizes among the many, the ones dear to her, labeled, in her husband’s blocky hand writing with black, permanent marker over off-white tape: LANE. 

Olivia whips her cellphone out. 

To the left of her depiction, closer to the center, is a pair of more recent additions, judging by the paleness of the tape, the revelations written on its length. A mad man and his son, both of them, simply, BISHOP.

 

***

 

Peter comes back to the bar through the red door that connects it to the bowling alley, having saved a pin spotter from the junkyard for the third time in as many months, always the one on the fifth lane to the left. For his efforts, he's rewarded with a superficial yet smarting burn on the heel of his palm, greasy fingers, a uniform shirt in need of industrial grade detergent if he's ever to get the smell of burning electronics away, and a headache firmly settled between his temples. That, and the promise of free beer for as long as he drinks at the Eight Ball. That was the deal struck, months ago.

 He's long been a disciple of the stream of thought wherein ability given away without pay is ability wasted, but in this instance he’d be willing to lend his hands over for free. Consider it a parting gift however unfair the trade may be. Tinkering, fixing things, it soothes him. It is never a chore. 

Glancing up at the clock, circumference held between the tips of a stag’s horns, he finds the arms pointing at a minute past 2am. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, yawns. Nick, well on his way to finishing up the cleaning for the day, is wiping tables and cleaning glasses and mopping up the little beer-and-ketchup disasters that come with pub work. 

“Hey, Nick,” Peter calls without raising his voice, waits for the other man to lift his head and turn. “Sam got a call. Told me to tell you to finish up around here and close before you go. He’s heading out.”

Nick snorts, goes back to the mop. “Asshole,” he mutters, but his tone lacks the sting of resentment. Fond, if anything. “Like that’s not exactly what happens every night.”

At some point, Lincoln fell asleep with the side of his face against the booth’s table, newspaper crossword folded into quarters, the blue Bic dropped atop it, stopped from rolling on and on and over by the square pepper shaker, serving as a weight over the paper. 

Peter grabs a chair and moves it to face the short edge of the table. He sits back on it and stretches his legs, ankles crossed, feet on the tabletop. To Nick, mopping up a spot between two other tables down towards the front door, he says, “I take it this doesn’t happen often?”

The bartender turns in a half-circle with the mop following close behind, in step with Phil Collins (Yet. Again.) crooning softly through the speakers. “What, Lincoln? Nah. His sister’s due to give birth any day now—she almost died with the first one. He’s been a wreck for a week.” He looks introspectively at his partner, then smiles at him. “It’s a shame, really. He’s a hilarious kind of drunk.” 

“I noticed. She live here?”

Nick shakes his head. “Back in Teaneck, New Jersey.” 

Teaneck, New Jersey. How about that? For all they’ve talked, Lincoln has never mentioned a sister. He’s never mentioned not being from Lakeside either. Where he’d call Olivia private about her personal life, he’d call this deputy shy, but that something as big as this hadn’t made it into daily conversation for as long as he’s been working at the station makes Peter think that Lincoln Lee might be more adept at misdirection than expected.

Traditionally, this is a bad situation for any con artist worth a damn, even if said con will not be in town fourth-eight hours from now. Lack of information often results in a bloody kind of failure. Peter asks, “Why does it seem to me like no one ever starts out in this town?”

“Because they don’t.” Nick answers, done with the mop, now back behind the bar. He picks up the first of a row of glasses that didn’t fit into the washing machine when he set the cycle earlier, grabs a rag and gets to work. “We all end up in it, for what it’s worth.”

“How did you?”

“End up here?” When Peter nods, he sets the glass down, gives it one last swipe with the cleaning rag. He says, quietly, “Because of Olive, actually.”

“As in, _Olivia_?” Peter sits up, and Nick gets a glint in his eye, deeper than mischief, serious for once. Something ruthless and hard, gone in a flash.

 “It’s a long story,” he answers curtly.

“Funny,” Peter says, standing form the chair, moving back to the stool he’d occupied earlier in the night, across from the bar. He’s not letting this one go. Not this time. “That’s exactly what _she_ said when I askedherhow she got here.”

Nick grimaces, like Peter is holding him at gunpoint for what state secrets he might be protecting instead of asking him an honest question. “We grew up together, sort of. Went to the same daycare when we were toddlers, the same school all the way until her mom died and she went away to boarding school. We met up again in the marines years later, have kept in contact ever since. It got…lonely, a couple of years back, so I tracked her down to Lakeside after I heard she left the FBI, ended up staying.” He shrugs. “She’s family.”

Peter doesn’t quite hear that last part.“Did you just say FBI?” 

“Huh.” Nick looks perplexed for a second, then gives him a once over that’s cold and calculating and unlike anything Peter’s ever seen crossing his expression. Peter stays very still. “I figured she’d have told you about that.”

This man is dangerous. Peter’s known this for a while. He might be preoccupied half the time, steeped so deep in Olivia he’s well on his way to going dumb and blind, but he’s always been good at paying attention to more than one variable in an equation at the same time, at knowing what people are at a glance. Nick Lane is dangerous. He sees too much. 

“She didn’t.” Peter says, smiling wryly. “Believe it or not, Olivia’s not very forthcoming about her personal life. We mostly just talk about the weather.”

Nick laughs, but doesn’t look up, his face guarded. Another game. Peter sighs. Correction: same game, different round, different players, different hands. 

“Why’d she leave?” he asks.

“I don’t think that’s my story to tell. You should ask her, though.” Nick shows his teeth. He’d call it a smile, but there’s an edge to the gesture, as if imbued with an almost feral, threatening nature. “She seems to trust you enough.”

Peter chuckles. “Yeah, about as far as she can throw me.”

Nick raises an eyebrow at that, and shit, but it really is uncanny how much they look alike doing that. Nick says, “You’d be surprised.”

It’s cryptic, the tone of his voice too knowing for Peter to feel at ease and leave it be. It’s been a long fucking night—he’s had enough of playing around. “Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is you’re holding back,” Peter grits out, cards on the table. “I can read people, too, Nick.”

Nick shakes his head, lowers his eyes—a graceful retreat. He’s too proud for surrender. “It’s none of my business.” He says, and the next thing out of his mouth is somewhere between pleading and a threat. “Don’t hurt her. That’s all.”

 

***

 

“We got a problem.” John speaks into his phone, pacing around the storage room’s floor, kicking up dust to shake off the biting cold. Bins lie open on the shelves, below the board full of crazy, and around the desk; files with official-looking stamps have been snatched, and searched, and strewn about at random. He says, “Someone’s found out about the basement.”

A lengthy pause, where Olivia looks away, presses her back against the wall and closes her eyes. Breathes in the crisp, cold air. Brushes a thumb across her eyes, her palms up her face, over her forehead, her hair. Then, “I _know_ because the files I brought back from Frankfurt are gone.” Pause. Shorter now. “Yes, those files.” Pause. “I’ll wait.”

The conversation ends. Olivia turns back to the vents. 

John hangs up, slides his phone back into one of the rear pockets of his dark, yellow-stitched dungarees. He turns the light off with a yank on the ball chain, steps out of the room. There’s an echoing clang as the door closes after him, sealing off the room it guards. Olivia moves to the end of the wall, where she can see him under moonlight despite the overcast skies. He locks the door, returns the keys to his jacket pocket and digs his chin into his scarf. He paces back and forth on the cobblstones.

Minutes pass, maybe hours. In moments like these, where nothing makes sense and no one’s about to stop and explain, time stretches, becomes more of a mess. Her hand idly strokes the butt of her Glock, the security strap on the holster undone. 

The echo of another set of footsteps joins John’s pacing on the cobblestones, coming from a different alley, growing louder as they move closer. Olivia rises from her crouch, slides her gun out. The footsteps bypass her, continue on and fade, then circle back again until a second man enters the basement from the path opposite the staircase. 

The man’s face remains in shadow under the hood of his jacket. They exchange curt greetings. A scarf covers his mouth, muffles his words, but it does not distort his voice enough that she can’t recognize his tone.

That’s when Samuel Weiss hits the floor. 

His body thuds to the ground with a smothered _oomph!_ faster than she can follow, and John moves on him, puts his knee between the other man’s shoulders as Sam haltingly recovers his breath from the punch and the throw that got him face down on the frozen cobblestone ground. John brings out a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, secures them firmly around Sam’s wrists. A gun to the head follows the knee, follows the handcuffs. 

Olivia wonders idly if he’s about to add murder to his charges. She wonders if she’s going to let him. 

John says, “You thought you could just steal from us? Huh? You thought we wouldn’t notice you replacing one of us?”

“What the hell—Replace _whom_?” Sam wheezes through his scarf, a breathless croak, the hood pulled back during the fall to reveal curly salt-and-pepper hair, slicked back, now in disarray.

“When was the last time we spoke?” John’s voice is harsh, a bark, a command instead of a question, regardless of intonation. 

“We spoke on the phone. It was a month ago. You were in Frankfurt. You called.”

“What was the last thing you said to me, before you hung up?”

“I’m not a fucking shapeshifter, Scott.”

John yanks at the handcuffs, pushes them forward towards his knee, elicits at a yelp from his captive. “Wrong answer. What did you say to me?”

“I said—I said, Bishop is here. That’s what I said.”

“Code and patronage. Tell me.”

“Why don’t you just cut my hand open and see for yourself, you son of a bitch?” Sam says, panting, in pain. “I still have the chip and I can guarantee my blood is as red as yours. There’s a knife in my left pocket.”

“Answer the question.”

“Fuck you. How do I know _you_ ’re not the shapeshifter?”

John stands, turns the man on the ground onto his back and raises his gun. “I guess you don’t.”

Olivia gets an answer to her question. She's ran down the first three steps before she realizes her feet are even moving, leaps down the rest, lands with a thump before he’s reacted. She aims at his head. “Stop! Drop the gun and put your hands in the air!”

“Liv? Is that you?” John turns on the spot, but doesn’t move his Beretta. His face goes slack, startled. A second later, he regains his composure, steps forward.

Her finger slides from barrel to trigger. Her voice rings out in the night, echoes through the alley, up the walls. “I said, drop the gun! Drop the gun and put your hands in the air. Do it.”

Anger mixes with bafflement on John’s face. He keeps moving forward, unafraid. “Liv, what the fuck? It’s me. It’s John.”

“Oh, I know.” Olivia shoots at the cobblestones by his feet, sharp satisfaction burning down her spine, through her veins, a jolt like the sparks coming off the floor at the shock on his face. “Drop the gun, John. I’m not telling you again.”

He does not. Instead, he turns it around with a slow flick of his wrist, offers it to her butt first, muzzle aiming at his chest. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Olivia. Let me explain.”

“Explain?” She doesn’t approach, doesn’t reach over to take the gun being offered. His range is greater than hers. They used to train together; he’s always fought dirty. “Yeah, you’re going to explain, John. But you’ll do it on my turf and on my terms, and if I have a say, you’ll do it in handcuffs. Put the gun on the ground, and kick it over. Slowly.”

John sighs. “I just want you to know that I didn’t want to do this.” He steps forward, then crouches down, sets the gun on the ground and clicks the safety back on. He stays there, knees bent, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, looking up at her. 

“Which part?” Olivia snarls.

“This one.” The gun flies at her face, and as Olivia ducks out of the way, startled, he catches her midsection with his shoulder, lifts her bodily off the ground and rams her against the wall. Her head hits the brick and she tastes blood on her tongue, the impact jarring, his hold strangling around her. 

Following the whiplash motion that has her head bouncing off the wall, Olivia grabs onto his shoulders, gets a knee bent and a foot against the wall and propels her body down, head-first into his face. She breaks his nose with her forehead, sends him sprawling backwards, on his ass. 

He still has her scarf fisted tight in his hands as he falls, and he’s heavy—the momentum brings her with him, and as she hits his ribs and then the ground, he reacts, rolls them around, blood gushing from his nose, down over his mouth. When he tries to choke her, at half-strength, still disoriented, she bites into his forearm, knees him in the gut, throws him off. 

They scramble for their guns, and aiming at each other, come to a stalemate. The motion, the violence, it stops, but the stars above and the alley do not. They turn and turn and turn. John, the blood on his face, the business end of his gun. Those become the only fixed spots as Olivia gasps for breath, ribs bruised, forehead bruised, a thin trail of blood sluggishly running down the back of her head, staining golden hair red. 

She’d curse, but she can’t breathe, let alone speak. She’d cry, but the cold has frozen her tears, turned them to icicles, like little snowflakes that refuse to slide down the slope of her cheeks, stuck to eyelashes, unseen.

Sam does the honors in breaking the silence. “Well if it isn’t the local paladin of justice. Hello, Dunham.” The man just can’t keep his mouth shut. At some point during their scuffle he’s turned on his side, then gotten his feet under him to kneel on the spot he was dropped on before. 

“Sam,” she greets between breaths.

“Weiss, stay the fuck on the ground.” John. His voice is nasal, strained. 

“Or what? What are you gonna do?” Sam says, taunting. Though he couldn’t have known she’d be here, he looks pleased. Nervous too, which is probably why he doesn’t recognize that he should be shutting up. “Shoot me and let her get a chance at returning the favor for me? I don’t think so.” He stands, leans back against the wall. “So good of you to join us, Deputy. A little unexpected, I’ll admit. Tell me, what brings you here this fine evening?”

In all the commotion they don’t notice the third set of footsteps approaching at a run, nor the low rumble of the patrol on the alley above. They do, however, hear the click of a revolver being cocked, and the gruff voice that accompanies it. “And here I was about to ask you the same thing. Move your weapon away from my deputy. _Now_.”

Charlie Francis has always had excellent timing.

A cellphone rings.

 

***

 

Karma, exhibit A:

He’s lying in the snow, bleeding to his death, and he can’t fucking get his glove off to dial the phone. 

Okay. Right. That might be too much, too fast. Rewind: 

Peter knows he’s being followed the moment he steps out the backdoor of the bowling alley. He gets a good look at his persecutor in a corner mirror bolted to the wall of the old Buck Stops locale, right before turning onto Main street, newspaper covered windows intended to signal renovation long since transformed into affirmations of abandonment. What he sees makes his blood run colder than the twenty-past-two-in-the-morning frost and the smell of snow. 

The man following him is well dressed, decked in a dark suit and a dark tie, and a heavy winter coat on top, the camera around his neck an exclamation point at the end of the statement that marks him alien to the place, a tourist for certain. Except Peter, not King but Bishop, knows Marshall O’Leary—he knows the perfectly parted hair, and the mortician’s black eyes, and the smooth cheeks, not even the shadow of a beard. And he knows that O’Leary carries a gun on his armpit, and a gun on his ankle, and a knife on his belly so it’s smoother to draw; he knows the dark gloves he prefers because they make it easier to get the blood out after he’s done his job for the day. 

Calling this man a tourist is like calling Einstein’s relativity ingenious. True, technically, but ultimately inaccurate.

The bad thing about making deals with the mob, any mob, is that if you piss them off enough, they forget about your transgressions, forget about your debts, for the amount of time it takes you to run far enough that you think yourself safe. And then they send someone like Marshall O’Leary to collect, knocking on door after door until he knocks on yours.

This is how he finds himself cornered three blocks from nowhere, in Lakeside, Wisconsin, with a blued PPK to the back of his head. 

“Hello, Peter.”

“Marshall. How’s your cousin?”

O’Leary shifts, steps close enough that Peter can smell the hint of chili peppers on his breath. “Michael’s doing better.” O’Leary says. “Still getting surgery for the hand you crushed. He sends his regards.”

“Yeah, he shoulda thought of his hand before using it to beat Tess within an inch of her life.”

The gun digs a little harder against Peter’s scalp. “Bitch had it coming. You know, fucking you? Bad decision. Probably back luck, too.”

The problem with Peter, the most prominent at the very least, is that for all the things he knows and all he’s taught himself, he never quite learned when to bite his tongue and keep his temper in check. “Bitch. Really? Tell me something, did I get his dick hand?” 

His temper gets him pistol whipped, of course. Peter falls to his knees with a thump and a grunt. 

O’Leary says, “I want you to know that when I’m done with you, I’m gonna cut your throat open, and I’m gonna rip out your tongue. Eddie asked for it. I think he wants to make a keepsake of it, something to remember you by. He’s helped Michael a lot, you know?”

“Big guy never did forget about his own.”

“Unlike you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Peter says. Getting one foot on the ground, kneeling sideways now. The gun’s a little farther from his head, but still pointed squarely at the space between ears right and left. “I was never one of you. It’s always been just me. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough.”

“Could be. Could also be that you owe the man half a million, and that makes you just as his as any of us.”

Peter laughs, and his laughter echoes back at him, hysterical. He can’t hear much over the pounding of his heart. “Oh, Marshall. I might be being egotistical here, but I’d like to think I’m worth a lot more than half a million bucks.”

On that note, Peter does something stupid—he’s got practice in stupid, you see, he’s nearly perfected it. He twists and ducks, and slaps the gun away as it goes off. His fist connects with O’Leary’s jaw, pushes him back. The gun drops to the ground. O’Leary reaches for his ankle holster, and as he leans down Peter steps on his hand, grabs the camera’s strap. He gets himself behind the henchman and drops to the ground, well away from the reach of the other man’s hands or the knife he’s drawn, stabbing wildly at the frigid air, aiming at Peter’s legs. Peter shoves a foot up against the man’s back, gives tension to the red and black embroidered strap, and he _pulls_.

The fight, if it can be called a fight, happens fast, but the dying goes slow. By the time it’s done his arms are numb and his thigh burns.

It isn’t until the contract killer has stopped breathing that Peter notices the blood, the sudden dampness of his clothes, the sharp pain an inch below his ribcage. Remembers then, how the gun went off. When he touches his side, under his coat, his hand comes away covered in blood. 

So. He’s lying in the snow, and a wet cold is seeping into his clothes, and he’s bleeding to death, and he can’t fucking get his glove off to dial the phone. 

Definitely karma.

 

***

 

_So, funny thing: I’ve been shot._

_You can’t call an ambulance. They'll know._

_Make sure Walter is safe._

_Bishop. My name’s Bishop._

_Get Walter. He’s not safe on his own._

_I’ve been shot._

She’s driving like a madwoman. Her phone, miraculously not broken when she hit the wall or slid to the floor, is propped up against the dashboard of Charlie’s patrol car, speaker on. She's hitting the throttle with all she’s got—she only prays for it to be enough. “Peter? Peter talk to me.” He hasn’t spoken in too long for her comfort.

She runs another red light. The fourth in a row. He says, “I’m here,” and Olivia breathes a little easier, brakes just enough to take the next turn without the tires entirely loosing traction on the asphalt below.

“Tell me a story.”

“‘Bout what?” He says it slowly, and it comes out low and rough, like he’s just woken up and every word requires effort, but there’s no pain in his tone. Of it all, that might be the thing that scares her most. If he can’t feel the bullet wound burning, the fallout of the tearing of his flesh, his blood pouring out (if he can’t feel anything at all), he’s a lot farther gone than she’d thought. 

“Anything.” Olivia turns the corner on Main, two blocks from the Buck Stops, still five blocks away from the alley he mentioned, tires screeching, back wheels skidding to the side in a wide arc before she course corrects by letting the steering wheel slide back a fraction of the curve. Thinks, gratefully, that least he knows exactly where he fell when he was shot. “Just keep talking for me. Just talk.” Don’t you dare pass out on me, Peter.

“Did I tell you about Walter’s collection of Christmas underwear?”

In spite of everything that’s happened, everything that is still happening and that she might be powerless to stop, Olivia laughs out loud at his words. With the bruise she knows must be blooming on her temple, even smiling hurts. “No, I don’t think you did,” she tells him. “What do they look like?”

“Awful. And funny, I guess, in a disturbing sort of way. There’s a lot of cutesy reindeer. The one with Rudolph’s got one of those flat LED lights right on his crotch that he can flick on and off by pressing on it—it’s supposed to be the nose, obviously. I’m pretty sure there’s a pair that jingles like a cowbell when he walks, but at least when he wears them I know where he’s at ninety-percent of the time. I think he’s had those since I was boy, actually—they were all in a box he made me dig up from a storage room he owns. He also kept his car there. It was half dead when he took me to it, the battery was damaged. Had a severed hand in a jar between the front seats when I jimmied the door open. Still don’t know if he even remembers who the hand belonged to; it’s hard to tell when he’s faking the crazy these days. He could remember where he’d parked his car before being committed to a mental institution seventeen years before, but he forgot he'd need the keys to get it to work.”

“So, what, did you hot-wire it? I’ve seen it parked by the apartment but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you drive it.” Olivia swings the car around a blocked off section of road, cracked badly under the stress of the temperature drop, waiting for the spring to come for proper filling and painting in weather that will let it seal and keep for at least another twelve months.

“Uh-uh. We found the spare in the glove compartment, attached to a rabbit’s foot. A stuffed one, mind you. White. It’s the softest thing. Funny, too. You’d think a man of science would know luck’s just probability gone wrong.”

“You told me he was a chemist, right?”

“Yeah. Worked for a toothpaste company when I was a kid. Used to teach, too. He was already chairman of Biochem at Harvard when I was born.”

He pauses, and she waits for him to tell her more but his voice doesn’t crackle through the speaker anymore, and the regular huff of his breathing is extinguished by a slide over cloth and a cushioned thump. 

“Peter?” 

This time she gets no answer. Olivia speeds up. 

He’s propped up against the wall when she finds him. She stops the car not ten feet from him, at the mouth of the alley. A bloody trail from his body to the corpse of his attacker in the bleached-bone, four-inch layer of snow details his efforts to bleed out faster as she dashes towards him. When she drops to her knees beside him she finds his eyelids falling.

She says his name, and then she says it again. He’s cold to the touch when she digs through his scarf to get to his pulse, finds it weak and slow, his breath coming in hot, shallow puffs, smoking in the cold like ghosts. A voice in the back of her mind whispers, _Dying_. It sounds a lot like her own.

_No._

When he doesn’t respond, she slaps him. It jerks him awake, startled. “Hey,” he says, after the fog in his blue stare clears away and recognition flashes. His teeth chatter. “You feeling okay? You’re looking a little pale there.”

She hits him in the chest, palm open, hard enough to hurt even as she breathes in relief. All is not lost if he's conscious enough to mock and make bad jokes. “Jackass.” 

Peter chuckles. “That’s what you keep telling me.” Looking as contrite as he can with blue lips to match his bloodshot eyes, he says, “Sorry I got you out of bed.”

“You didn’t,” Olivia says. Her fingers tremble as she unknots the scarf around her throat, balls it up to press it down against his side. “I was, uh…awake.” 

Eyes follow her hands, stray down to the opening of her uniform shirt, over the inches of skin left bare without the fabric, down the column of her throat and the purple arc of teeth biting on bone. His face is naked in streetlight, vulnerable in a way she's never seen before, haloed by brick and ice and snow; the moment realization dawns on him, she knows. “Oh.” Questions flicker over his features, but he discards them all. "Sorry I interrupted you, then.” 

Olivia wants to groan, but she restrains herself. Rolls her eyes at him instead. None-too-gently, she increases the pressure of the scarf in her hands on the bloody patch growing over the side of his abdomen, like a sea of red ink in their tally of costs. Peter grits his teeth, squeezing together the bones in her wrists. “Really? She says, exasperated. She presses down harder with every word out of her mouth. It’s not like she needs the reminder. “You’re bleeding out and _that_ ’ _s_ what you want to talk about?”

He chokes out some mongrel sound between a whimper and a laugh. “Hey, maybe that’s exactly why I’m asking.”

Ordinarily, she’d tell him to shut up and leave it at that, uncomfortable at his familiarity, at the way his closeness refuses to bother her, at the way she sometimes finds that she wants it. Wants him around her. Now, she asks him, “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Easier for you to tell me all your secrets if you know I’ll die after.”

“Your flair for the dramatic is commendable,” she says dryly. She pulls him forward with a hand on the collar of his navy blue peacoat, away from the wall, and shoves herself through the crook of his arm, swings it up and around her with a push on his biceps. She grabs onto his belt, front and back, hauls him up with the help of the wall as she stands. “But I’m sorry to tell you that no one is dying tonight.” Damn it, but he’s heavy, and he’s nearly a foot taller, and she’s had a rough night. It comes out a little strangled, conviction lacking. “C’mon, I’m gonna need your help if I’m gonna get you to the car.”

“Too heavy?” He asks, cold lips and warm mouth tight against her forehead, trying, and failing, to push himself upright on limbs that he can’t feel because they’ve fallen asleep. 

“Too slow.”

“And here I thought you liked it like that.”

Now she groans. Leave it to the man to think of little else even as he dies, a finger to the fates and all their plans. “Not right now, I don’t. _Come. On._ ”

Once she’s maneuvered him onto the passenger side and shaken the gearshift off park, Olivia whips out her phone, dials the only doctor she knows will be discreet enough.

“Frank? I need your help.”

 

***

 

Peter’s passed out entirely by the time she reaches the Sheriff’s Department. She stops the car and bolts out of the driver’s door, leaving it open and the car running in her hurry, already bellowing for the people inside to come help her get the unconscious, bleeding man off the passenger side. 

When she opens his door, he tumbles down head-first into her midsection, sliding to the ground until she catches him by the arms and hauls him up. She shakes him, calls his name, hits him over the back of his head, but he doesn’t wake and he doesn’t answer, and he leaves a bloody patch behind him on the synthetic fabric covering the car seat.

A second car violently brakes into the Department’s driveway, and Frank dashes out of the driver’s side to rush to her aid, grabbing Peter’s legs and shouting for Lincoln, who’s just made it outside, to grab the bag in the backseat and bring it back with him to the Department. 

“What happened?” Frank asks, taking charge as they walk the driveway to the bottle green double doors Charlie and Lincoln have propped wide open, a couple of scaled down boulders holding them both from swinging shut. 

“He was shot, like I told you on the phone. Left side. Other than that, I have no idea. He was barely coherent before he passed out.”

“How long’s he been out?”

“Three, maybe five minutes. At most.”

“Alright, I need you to take me to a room that has a table large enough for him. Are there any?”

Olivia weaves her fingers together across Peter’s chest, her arms under his shoulders to secure her hold on his upper body, her chin supported on the slope of his shoulder so she can see where she walks. She says, “There’ll be a meeting room on your right about ten feet after we make it inside. I’ll let you know. Did Astrid get Walter?”

Frank nods. “We left the house at the same time, she should be getting here soon.”

When they reach the room, they haul their cargo onto the tabletop with matching grunts, and strip him down layer by layer to a bloody, barely white, long-sleeved merino henley and an undershirt that Frank cuts away with scissors taken from the bag Lincoln dropped beside him at some point. 

“I need a desk lamp.” Frank says, slapping blue latex gloves on, and getting instruments out of the bag and onto a chair he’s pulled aside, lining them up on a white towel she didn’t see him get out. Lincoln, hovering, not knowing how to be of use, perks up at that, runs out of the room. “There’s no exit wound. Did you see what he was shot with?”

Olivia racks her brain, calls back the picture of the scene she found him in, but finds it little more than a blur of blood and snow and desperation. She can’t say she was paying attention. “Nothing bigger than a handgun, but I didn’t see it clearly. I don’t know the make or the caliber.”

Not a minute later, Lincoln arrives with the lamp. He sets it across from the wound and plugs it into a socket, hits the on switch. Blood pouring out with every beat of a laboring heart doesn’t actually look any better under halogen light.

“Turn him on his side,” Frank instructs, motioning with his hands. With some effort, she does as he says, steps back when he takes his place perpendicular to the round, bleeding wound on Peter’s left flank. Frowning, Frank picks up a scalpel, a lighter and a bottle of alcohol to sterilize it, and gets to work. “Well, I can tell you the bullet’s a hollow-point. Nothing else would still be inside, assuming he was shot up close. He was lucky.”

“Lucky how?”

“Hollow-points do more damage, because they’re made to expand their diameter on impact. I expect you know that,” he says, opening the incision he’s just made into the wounded flesh and sticking a retractor between the sides to keep it like that. He locks the instrument in place, moves over to inspect the rest of his tools on the chair. “That means the damage is greater and the wounded area larger on the inner tissue. There could be pieces of lead anywhere in the left side of his torso right now, so finding them is a priority before I can suture him up. That’s pretty much as bad as it gets, considering the fact that the longer the wound’s open the risk of sepsis increases; if I miss even a millimeter of a shard, the risk of sepsis increases; if I miss a cut, a nick somewhere inside along the bullet’s path, it’s not even a risk: he dies. But he’s also still alive, so a nicked artery’s out of the question—at least that gives me time. Lucky, like I said.”

Olivia has no comment for that. Luck is not something she can quantify, not something sentient that she can question or arrest for its crimes. Not something to outrun, to resist, to do violence unto. If it exists, she has never been graced with so much as a sliver of it. Everything she has, Olivia has fought for, everything she’s lost she has shoulders to place the blame upon. Her own are first in a row that even now remains short.

“You’re gonna need to hold him down if he wakes up,” Frank says. “This is gonna hurt like hell.” A warning, even though she’s already prepared herself for that particular eventuality; even though her hands shake from the adrenaline of the past few hours, and her knees protest with sharp, shooting stabs of pain after every step she takes. For all the things inside the coroner’s bag, anesthetic does not figure in their plans. The dead don’t mind pain of any kind. 

“You asked me once, why I’m not a surgeon.” Frank finds the ruptured blood vessels, seals them with a clamp, stops the bleeding. He picks up a pair of forceps and starts looking for lead.

Olivia nods, surprised he remembers. That was years ago. 

He says, “I was. Worked in an Emergency Room. In Detroit of all places. Patient came in once, stabbed half a dozen times on his side—we took him to the OR, sewed him shut, medicated him. Everything went perfectly. Couple of days later, he died. They opened him up, the coroners, found out I missed the fact that one of the blades nicked his colon on the way out. He survived all that, and I killed him. Blood poisoning’s not a fast way to die, not even in a hospital ward. I decided I’d rather help people I couldn’t be responsible for killing. Help their families find some peace, at the very least.”

 And then Walter Bishop pushes through the wooden door, rushes to the unconscious form of his son.

 

***

 

Olivia closes the door behind her when she steps out of the room. With Walter inside, helping instead of uselessly standing around, there’s no need for her to remain. If he _is_ going to die she wants to be well away, preoccupied with something else. Doing her job, like as not. She’s never done well waiting around for death, unable to do anything to stop it from taking people away. 

Her hands look angry in red. When she looks down at herself she finds her pants and jacket damp and smeared with blood. She takes the jacket off, throws it over her desk. The bathroom lights don’t help the pounding headache building from the base of her neck to the front of her head. 

Hot water scalds her palms as she scrubs them clean of blood and gunpowder and grime. She notices the way it burns only a little, cares about it much less. Looking in the mirror reveals the extent of her injuries—there’s a cut on her right temple, and the necessary bump after breaking someone’s nose. The cut is shallow, the crusted blood sealing it shut obscured by her hairline, the area tender to the touch. It’s already bruising down over her temple, up into her scalp. 

When she pulls her hat off and probes the back of her head, she does so softly, with care, but still hisses in pain. She bit her cheek at some point, probably earlier, when her skull kissed the wall with bruising force. 

In short: she looks like shit, feels even worse. 

There’s a knock on the open door, but Olivia doesn’t look away, doesn’t turn. “Liv?” Charlie’s voice, the thump of steps on the floor. A hand on her arm, another face beside hers on the mirror in front of her. Strong, stony features, thick black eyebrows and an aquiline nose. “Kid?”

“Hey,” she says. 

“You look like shit.” His remark is dry, but there's something in the way he says it that speaks of pride. 

Olivia chuckles. “Yeah…”

“What happened out there?”

“Where? I feel like I’ve been everywhere today.”

“With King.”

Olivia sighs. How much of her personal life can she keep intact? “Apparently, his last name is Bishop. As far as he told me on the phone, he was here hiding from the mob, protecting his father so he couldn’t be used to get back at him. He owes money. Other than that, I don’t know. He was shot and he called and I brought him here for Frank to fix. That’s all.”

“An ambulance didn’t cross you mind?” Charlie raises his eyebrows.

“It did,” she says. “He warned me not to call one, said they’d know. He also told me his father was in danger, which is why I had Astrid bring him over. He’s helping Frank.”

“Helping. The crazy cook is _helping_.” 

“Well, he looked anything but mad with his son dying on a table in front of him.”

“So you just… left them there.”

_I don’t want to see him die._

“Why would I stay? Ninety-percent of the time I can’t save lives, Charlie, only punish the people who take them. I’ve made my peace with that. I’m also no good at sitting around, but you know that.”

Charlie frowns, purses his lips. Most days he can tell perfectly well when she’s shutting him out without her stressing the fact. Today, it takes him longer, but he gets there all the same. “Did you get the other guy?”

“He’s dead. Was before I got there,” Olivia says. The relief she feels at him dropping the subject must show plainly on her face, because Charlie softens, smiles again. Work is easy. Work is safe. “Body’s still at the scene.”

He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but no words come out. As he turns to go, he sets down a first aid kit she hadn’t seen him bring in by the side of the sink. “I’ll get Nick on that.” 

“Nick?” 

He shrugs. “You took my car. Apparently, Lincoln was too drunk to drive.”

Olivia nods. Nick is here. After seeing him on that wall, it feels right. “Shooter had a camera,” she says. “Make sure he gets it—I wanna know what pictures he’s taken.”

“Will do.” He stops at the door. Turns back with a hand on the wall. “Hey, Liv?”

The white plastic clasps on the first-aid kit, a standard issue, white plastic box with a red cross painted bright across the top, pop as they release. “Yeah?” 

“You think we can trust him? Bishop, or King, or whoever he is?”

The question gives her pause. It’s a long time before she answers, but he waits patiently enough. She shrugs, says, “I’ll tell you when I know,” and seeing that he won’t get anything more, he leaves her alone. 

She’s done making judgments relying only on her gut. Evidently, it has failed her spectacularly before. 

 

***

 

Sam Weiss doesn’t rise or otherwise move from his cross-legged pose on the paper-thin mattress of the cot as Olivia closes the cell door and turns to stand with her back against the bars and the corridor beyond them. 

“Hello, Sam.”

“Dunham.” He nods in her direction. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m tired of your games,” Olivia says, direct.

“Oh?”

“You think yourself untouchable because somehow, in some way, you’ve got the protection of the world’s largest corporation. You forget that powerful or not, they’re not above the law.” 

Sam snorts. “Don’t be naive, Agent Dunham. It doesn’t suit you. Massive Dynamic is a bite quite a bit larger than you can chew.”

 _Agent_. 

It has been five years since the last time Olivia was addressed as such. Hearing it now makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, makes her fists clench. It’s a good thing she excels at self-restraint, she’d like nothing more than a good excuse to break his face (it felt good, to feel the give of the bone in John’s nose as it broke, to be able to lash out, to feel something other than numb. The impulse to do it again is what gives her clarity, stops her from trying. She’s not that kind of monster, but she’s known him. He sends a card every year, and he gloats. She won’t become him). It doesn’t come as a surprise that he’d know. If John bothered to be thorough Sam knows a great deal more than he intends on letting on. “It’s Deputy, Mr. Weiss. I haven’t been a federal employee for a long time.”

“Oh, I know. But that’s just your job. The FBI was more than that, was it not?”

He’s trying to rile her. Trying to unbalance her by showing her he owns some inside knowledge on things she’s never told him. It doesn’t work half as well as he probably thought it would—she’s not that woman anymore. He's right, it was more, but Agent Dunham was buried in Boston a while ago. “I’m not here to have my life story narrated back at me,” she tells him, the smile on her face contradicting the edge in her voice. “I want you to tell me everything you know.”

“That’s going to take some time, _Deputy._ I’m afraid I know a lot of stuff.”

“I’m not asking for the colors of the rainbow, Sam. What does Massive Dynamic have to do with these “shapeshifters”? That’s what you called them, isn’t it? How is the company involved in the killings of the past few months? That’s all I want to know.”

“No, it’s not.” 

“No?” Olivia tilts her head to the side.

He nods no. “You forgot to ask what Massive Dynamic has to do with you.”

“I suppose I did,” she agrees. “Now, talk.”

Sam let’s his head drop back to rest against the wall behind. “Get Walter Bishop in here, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Isn’t it?” His eyebrows shoot up in a satirical version of surprise. “Then why should I tell you anything?”

“Because I’m armed, Sam. And lacking patience.” The hand she moves to the butt of her gun is more for her own reassurance that it’s really there than it is a threat, but he doesn’t know that because he doesn’t know her. She is far more than the collection of facts he was given to study, once. She sees him grow pale as he follows her hand.

“Ah, but the thing you’re not seeing is that I still have the advantage here,” he’s quick to point out. “You can hurt me, but that doesn’t bode well for the quality of the information you’ll get. And you can’t kill me, because even if your boy Johnny talks, he doesn’t have all the answers I know.”

“What do you want?”

“I told you, Dunham,” he says, and it sounds exasperated, like she’s missed the punchline of a joke. “I always do, but you never listen. You get me Walter Bishop, and I’ll talk.”

 

***

 

His mouth feels like someone upended a box of pencil shavings between his lips and then made sure to shove them in. The room is spinning above him; it’s hard to open his eyes, but he feels it, he knows it. He’s trying to move but his body is slow to start listening. It responds, eventually, with the curling of his toes, the slide of his palm on the surface below him. 

There is pain and it is everywhere, but it feels like an echo, far away. He feels heavy, and weak.

There is a sound in the room, a murmur of syllables repeating without context. There are hands on his head, fingers pressing against his neck, hands on his arm, hands in his hand. Soft hands, the flesh of them loose, the knuckles hard, the bones of digits shaking beneath skin that feels sweaty and thin. Brittle, he thinks, and the thought rides through the fog to the forefront of all the other fragments of thoughts, crosses the threshold into consciousness. Then, “Peter?” His name.

 A pause, small and deadly silent, followed by, “Peter?” again.

The voice is familiar. It calls him. He is Peter, and he has always been; and he wants to respond, open his mouth, move his tongue. But his mouth is dry and his tongue is heavy and no words are formed; only rasping, incoherent noise leaves the confines of his throat. 

The hands move away, and the next thing he feels is a coolness pushing through his lips and onto his tongue, turning to liquid in the uncomfortable, dry heat, soothing the rawness. Ice. 

Peter opens his eyes. The ceiling swims, zooms out and in, creating three-dimensional cosine waves above his head. Someone leans over him, interrupts the burning of the light. Fingers drag his bottom eyelids down, smooth over his forehead, satisfied. His eyesight clears. Walter. 

“Peter?”

“Walter,” he croaks. “What happened?”

His father smiles, and it’s a sober smile, one Peter doesn’t remember seeing at any point in his adolescence or the last few months of his adult life. It is joyful and tender, and bright. He closes his eyes, blames the light. Walter tightens the hold he still has on his hand. “What do you remember?” 

Fear. Pain, distant, but there. Snow. Blood. Headlamps on full beam. Eyes that were dark, and worried, and green. “I remember…cold. I was cold. I was…shot?”

“Yes. Good. That's very good, son,” Walter says. “Anything else?”

“I…Olivia was there, I think.” He retains a vague awareness, also, that he spilled some truths during the night that he now understands he should have thought twice about saying out loud. Damn. “Where am I?”

“The Sheriff’s Department. Deputy Dunham brought you here. You told her you’d be in danger at the hospital. Something about your mobster friend, Large Eddie.”

“ _Big_ Eddie, Walter. And he’s not my friend.” The correction is gentle, and he tells himself he simply lacks the energy to scorn his father for his addled mind and his inaccuracies. “So, why am I not dead?”

There’s a knock on the door, a series of hollow thumps that he only registers because Walter jumps, and never gets to respond. His father looks up at the source of the knocking and grins his madman’s grin, looks back down at him and winks. “I’ll leave the two of you alone. I believe Deputy Farnsworth said something about pie, and I do find myself terribly hungry.”

Before he leaves, Peter hears Walter murmur something unintelligible to the person by the door, hears the person respond in a voice just as low. He could not care less what they say. Right now he feels like he could fly to Jupiter and stay there. Whatever drug they gave him, it’s good. He can barely feel himself in the room.

He’s drifting off again, his eyelids half-closed of their own accord when another voice filters through, keeps him awake. 

“How are you feeling?” The voice asks, rich and thick and relieved. In his field of vision: Olivia. 

“Like I’m floating on a cloud of cotton candy,” He smiles—or at least he thinks he smiles, if his face does something else he’s unable to tell. “Hard, raspy cotton candy. That moves. If you stay long enough I may throw up on you.”

“Never had oxy before?” She chuckles, disbelief etched in the details of the expression on her face. 

“You seem surprised,” Peter says. Every word feels clumsy, like trying to talk with some combination of a numb tongue and an occluded nose.

“I know what bullet wounds look like.” Olivia puts her hand on his chest, which he only now realizes is bare, fingers running softly over the puckered scar on the fleshy spot between right shoulder and chest, below the joint there. “This isn’t your first.”

“And yet you never asked.”

A flicker of a smile, wry. “I don’t like being lied to.”

“That’s…probably fair,” he says, because it is, because she’s right. He has told her no lies because she has never asked, and the questions she did throw his way were all mostly worded in ways that allowed him to answer with portions of the truth, without modifiers. Things about his childhood, things about Walter, some of the jobs he’s worked to stay afloat between cons because the variety of them always seemed to delight her. 

Knowledge that even now he’d classify as harmless. 

“What happened out there?” she frowns and she asks. Maybe even the other way around.

“Told you: mob found me, wanted their money. Their interest rates are a little high, so I declined.” He feels nauseous and unstable, the pain in his midsection no longer an echo. Growing as he talks. “I guess they didn’t like that a lot.”

“Is it drug money? What you owe?” 

Peter shakes his head. Drugs were always more trouble than their money's worth. “Gambling,” he says. “I went a little crazy a few years ago.”

“You said you were protecting Walter, on the phone.”

“Mhm.”

“Protecting him from what?”

“I’d have hidden somewhere like this anyway, Walter or not.” He doesn’t even notice that he’s saying it out loud until the words are all out of his mouth. One of the side-effects of oxycodone must be a loose tongue, but he doesn’t regret it later, looking at the neutral expression on her face, at the way her hand remains on his chest. He’s already compromised—what comes next for him, from here on, is all her choice. If he lies now she’ll know, and it’ll just be worse. 

So he tells her. At the velocity of a turtle, but he tells it all. “He had a heart attack in Saint Claire’s— that’s the mental hospital they committed him to, by the way. The hospital called me back to the States to authorize the surgery he’d need, to prevent a repeat. I was…finishing a job in Iraq. The moment I put a foot in Boston, Eddie, they guy I owe to, knew. But they couldn’t touch me directly if they wanted the money, and they knew that, too. I’d put…security measures…in place, so they’d need me alive. So they watched, and they waited. I went to the hospital only to sign the papers, I didn’t want to see Walter. In eighteen years I'd never visited. But they brought him into the room anyway, the nurses. Eddie’s people, they…took pictures, investigated. When they finally approached me, they were clear. They were going to kill him if I didn’t do as they said. They were going to kill my father, and they were going to make me watch it. I couldn’t leave him. I tried. I keep trying, but…I can’t.”

“Why try to kill you now if they’d lose the money?”

“Pissed them off that they couldn’t catch me when I ran, I suppose. It was never about the money, anyway. I wounded their pride. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you. It’s not like vendettas are a logical enterprise.” He closes his eyes after he says that, scrunches them tightly against the light. Deepens his breathing, clenches his jaw. Despite what he said when she sat there, beside him, he’d very much like to avoid emptying the contents of his stomach on her boots.

Apparently, and though he doesn’t mean to and certainly doesn’t want to (he’s hurt, sure, but he’s not a fucking invalid, Jesus, fuck), he’s broadcasting the depth of his discomfort to all with eyes to see and ears to listen, loud and clear. Which, in this instance, means, of course, only Olivia. 

She frowns, looks at the black and gray Timex watch she always wears upside down, against the inside of her wrist. Pats his chest once, and stands. Comes back not a minute later with water in a disposable cup, slides one of her hands under his shoulders, props him up until he’s half-way to sitting up. She drops a couple of oblong yellow pills into his mouth, bids him drink. 

Peter doesn’t. Instead, he frowns. “Did Walter give you these?” he asks around the pills, pushing them to his cheeks like candy, ready to spit them back out depending on her answer.

“That’s just Percocet,” she tells him, amusement in her tone. “They gave you some earlier, after Frank stitched you up, but you probably don’t remember. It’s time for your next dose, anyway. Drink up.”

He drinks.

When he’s drained the entire cup, he looks at her, and he says, “I didn’t, you know? Lie to you. Aside from my name.” For reasons he can’t call to mind at the time, it’s important that she knows that. 

“I’d say that’s enough, wouldn’t you?” Olivia takes the cup away, lowers him back down until he’s flat on the table, warm hand cradling the back of his head through the descent so he doesn’t hurt himself.

“I’m more than a last name.” _You know me_ , is what he means. _You know me. Please_. _I’m not my father. Please._

She says, “Yeah. I know.” And her fingers, seemingly of their own accord, follow the arc of his eyebrows down to the side of his face, to the dimple between his lower lip and his chin. When she notices the caress she takes her hand away, and her eyes away, and she says nothing else. She leaves him there.

 

***

 

The sun rises late. The clock on the wall of the Sheriff’s office reads eight thirty-seven AM when Olivia sees the horizon start to lighten up from her spot on the couch, through the window’s open blinds. She’s just sent everyone home, to shower, to eat, to sleep a few hours. Get some rest before duty calls. 

Olivia doesn’t sleep, but she hasn’t been trying either.

Before they left, Lincoln and Nick had accompanied her to the basement room where she’d caught John and Sam earlier in the night. They helped her bring a few of the plastic bins filled with files back to the station. Nick’s reaction to his picture on the wall had been a glassy stare, and dead silence for the rest of the drive. 

Charlie’d debriefed them on the details of the case that had been kept from them while she made an attempt at patching up the wounds that were obvious enough for the mirror to show; washing her hair, changing into a set of clothes free of anyone’s blood. She’d not been there to see realization dawn upon them as they watched the lines form between the dots, to see betrayal flicker through their features as the tale spun. At some point she’ll have to pull the Sheriff aside and thank him for that. 

But the thing is, present or not, Olivia knows from experience that believing something and having hard evidence for it are two situations that rarely elicit an equal response. 

Before this year, she’d not given much thought to the strain that being aware of your own madness can cause on the psyche. She’s sorry for that. Sorry she’d never told the first friend she ever had that she’s always thought the cat was right: they’re all a little mad. Sorry she’d ever thought she’d understand better if Nick knew what words to say to explain to her what it felt like to have his mind slowly spiral out of his grasp.

She’d spoken to him briefly before he left, to make sure he was okay, and he’d grabbed her, and hugged her, and he’d told her he was sorry—he’d said, “I didn’t want to be right.” She hadn’t had the mind to ask him to elaborate on that. Had been too busy restraining herself from pushing him away, moving awkwardly instead to accept the embrace. It had taken a minute to remember that the meaning of his proximity did not spell imminent harm.

Anyway. They took the files. They brought them here. And it is those same files that have occupied the last few hours of her time. She’s picked through most of them, spread them on the floor in a pattern resembling the aftermath of a blind date between gunpowder and dynamite. The camera retrieved from the dead man lies beside her, the pictures on it printed out and arranged in a small stack on the coffee table beside Peter’s file. 

Mob guy had been here for some time. A couple of weeks at least, if she could match the places in the pictures to the days they drove each route. Flipping through the stack, she’d found herself among the people depicted, out of focus in most, with Peter in sharp definition, always standing by her side, hovering close, a few steps behind. A day ago she’d have been a little more surprised.

It seems she lives life through the lenses of people watching, out of sight. 

Olivia leans forward in her seat, elbows to knees. She takes her glasses off, rubs at the marks on the bridge of her nose with her thumb. Her eyes burn, dry from lack of sleep and the heating and the cold. She puts the files in twin piles on either side of her on the couch, writes “read” on a post-it with a pen from Charlie’s desk, and slaps it on the pile to the left. 

Later, second coffee pot of the day steaming in the kitchenette three doors away, fresh coffee cup served and a small tupperware full of the leftover crumbs of Astrid’s cookies (all of this in an effort to keep a budding headache away), a knock on the door startles her.

Walter. He stands there awkwardly, left hand clasped in his right, watery eyes drooping at the edges, stooping stance making of his back more a question mark than a line. “Olivia?”

“Walter.” She sets her coffee cup down. He brings with him a somber air, an oppressing sense of finality. “Did you need something?”

“Yes…” His voice waivers and he shuffles on his feet, looking lost, looking troubled. Olivia has never been great at waiting, but the world has been teaching her patience. Suspense can be a beautiful thing when the possibilities in certainty mean truths more harmful than they're worth. She gives him time. Eventually, he takes a deep breath, and he straightens. He transforms, seems to unfurl from his hunched pose. He says, more firmly, “Yes. Peter goes free.”

“What?” 

“When I left my son so he could speak with you, earlier, you said your prisoners would not tell you anything unless I was present during the interrogation. You need me.” He speaks very slowly, his voice modulated and steady. A glint in his eye, calculating, and cruel, shark-like. Knowing full well that he has the advantage. “If you want my presence, or my help, Peter is to be released. That is my price.”

It occurs to her, as she looks into that cold, cold face, lined with years of arrogance and pride, that this, and not the madman, is the man Peter grew up with, the one he called father as a child. The man that sowed the seeds of all the resentment, all the anger in him. That left, and returned a shell of himself to gather the rotten fruit as it fell from the tree. 

Olivia sighs. There is always a price. “Okay, Walter,” she tells him. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Excellent! Now, my dear, if you could direct me to the restrooms…I’m afraid my bladder is no longer what it used to be.”

 

***

 

The cell door creaks as it opens. None of the cells face each other, they stand in a row. Between the cells and the wall they face there is a hallway, and the floors of the hallway are old, pale wood, tan at the center, browning with age at the edges. Bisections of chopped branches show in knots like Rorschach splatters over the unstained boards.

This particular cell is the last, the fourth of the row. The cell isn’t locked, but not for lack of want. It would have been impractical to leave Walter locked up all night, after he’d refused to leave his son’s side. Inside the cell, then: Peter. 

Peter, stretched out on the cot, tucked to his chin into a scratchy army colored blanket, his feet clad in thick blue-striped socks and hanging off the too-short mattress and the iron frame it. He’s awake, but barely. Turns his head at the creak of the hinges, makes to lift it, but only seems to see her when she leans over him to press a hand to his forehead. Olivia finds it burning.

“You have a fever.”

He nods, follows the path of her hand as it leaves his face to press against the clammy, hot skin of his neck, check his pulse. He traps the hand there, between his chin and his neck, and the pillow where he rests his head. “It’s normal,” he says, speaking easier now than he did when she questioned him earlier. “It’s, uh, a post-traumatic response. It’s also not very high. Walter checked before he left.” 

“You taking anything for it?”

“Antibiotics. I’ll just sweat it out, eventually.” He’s looking at her with a thousand questions waiting behind the thin veil of his glassy stare, but he asks only one of them. “Am I under arrest?”

Olivia doesn’t answer. She sits down on the edge of the cot, about a foot below his shoulder. When she pushes the blanket down to the edge of the long johns under his jeans she finds him shivering beneath it, a fresh square of gauze taped over his stitches. Walter has certainly been diligent. “Think you can sit up for a bit?”

He takes a moment to consider the question, and the reasons for the question, then grimaces, and says, “If you help me, maybe.” Olivia would smile, but she suspects that wouldn’t sit well with his pride.

She nods and leans over him, and slips a hand under his neck while he puts his arms under hers, holds on to the tops of her shoulders. With a grunt, he gets his feet flat onto the mattress, helps her push his body back as she straightens and drags him up. Rests the top of his shoulders against the back wall. 

The look he gives her is expectant, so she drapes the shirt she brought in over his legs. “Here,” she says.

Peter frowns. “What’s this?”

“Lincoln’s bowling shirt. He keeps it here in case he needs something to change into, said you could borrow it.” She pauses. Then she says, “The other option was an inmate shirt; I figured you’d prefer something other than the orange.” Olivia hopes he understands she’s answering his question. That she knew he would ask. 

The shirt is thick, the black polyester blend heavy, the collar and the stripes running down the armpits to the bottom of each flank a vivid yellow. He grabs the shirt and inspects it, turns it around, moving his fingers over the embroidered bee on its back like it might carry some message written in Braille. 

He looks at it for a long time. Shivering, fingers unsteady, he undoes the buttons. With some effort, he slips it on. Looks at her, nods. He says, “Good call,” and she knows she got the message across. Then, “What’s the name of the team? The Stingers?”

“The Queen’s Bees.” She grins at the look on his face, at the emphatic _are you shitting me?_ expression he wears.

“You’re joking.”

Olivia shakes her head. “It’s Sonia’s team. Well, Charlie’s, but you know, not really. You’ll get your shirt with your badge, when the paperwork comes through.” He’s quick in hiding his surprise at that, his confusion. What remains is artfully blank, carefully posed. Assessing, looking for the catch, for the hidden threat that isn’t there. Olivia says, “What you did with Doyle yesterday…I understand your reasons, but I want to be clear: if you ever do that again without my permission, I will shoot you.”

Peter smiles—the kind of smile that lights up his eyes, makes the blue deeper, brighter. “Permission’s not really my thing.”

He’s lucky. Her anger’s all packed away, still waiting. It has learnt patience better than her. “I’ve noticed. You’ve got quite the record. Arrested seven times, never convicted.”

Against her expectations, she receives no sarcastic retort. The smile falls, and he looks away. He says, “That was fast.” 

“I have my sources.”

“The FBI?” he asks, and it’s vicious and defensive and a little sad. He lacks the subtlety that is his mark, but she supposes he has a valid excuse for that. With a bullet hole on his side, he probably won’t be fully sober for some time. 

The shock of his words must show on her face. Before she’s gathered herself and found the right words to say, Peter sighs and shivers under the hold of the fever, his forehead glistening. His voice carries something like regret when he explains, “Nick told me.”

Olivia rubs a hand over her forehead. She asks, “What did he say?”

“That you left,” he says. “That I’d have to ask you for the whole story if I wanted to hear it.”

“It’s not that interesting.”

“It is to me.”

Olivia takes a breath, thinks, _don’t make me regret this_. Then, “I didn’t leave. They threw me out. I’d caught a case, and I’d caught a killer. A man who was developing chemical weapons in his basement, and kidnapping women off the street so he could test them. Prostitutes, mostly. I had evidence, phone call records, a security tape…all of which connected the killer to another agent at the FBI. A man I’d convicted before, when I was a prosecutor for the Marines. His name was Sanford Harris. He’d been found guilty of sexual assault against three different women under his command, sentenced to fifteen years of rotting in a cell. I hadn’t known then, but Mr. Harris had friends in high places. That laws become guidelines the higher you get up the ladder of command. The sentence was overturned, and the charges were cleared. So, when I accused him, years later, of being involved in those murders, he got himself a lawyer before saying anything, and he took me to trial on grounds of conspiracy--said I was biased.” Up until this point she’s kept a straight face, but her voice cracks when she keeps on. She says, “I lost. In the space of five hours and seventeen minutes I was discredited, and my career was destroyed. They took my gun, and they took my badge, and they threw me out. That’s all there is to tell.” 

When she finishes and looks at him, she finds him frowning, going over her words and what may lie behind them. When he speaks, she’s already guessed what he’s going to ask. She’d hoped the fever would distract him from going down that path. 

“What happened to the evidence?” he asks.

“It…vanished.” Olivia smirks. “Like it was never there in the first place.”

“Stolen?”

“That’s what we put in the report, yes.”

“We?”

“John and I. He was my partner.”

Peter raises his eyebrows. “So they threw you both out.” It’s not phrased as a question but she answers it regardless. Better to get it over with. At some point he’s going to ask, and she won’t have the benefit of a fever clouding his mind. 

“No,” she shakes her head. “Just me. John had seniority. He’d been an agent far longer than I had. He was given a suspension, and the privilege of leaving on his own terms. We got married about six months later.”

“And then you came here?”

“Yeah. Rachel had just gotten divorced, and the Department was hiring. I didn’t see a reason not to.”

“Olivia, what happened to your face?” The question catches her unawares, like his fingers on her temple, his sudden, focused stare. 

“It’s nothing.” She moves his hand away, catches it in hers, drops it back onto the mattress. He lets her. 

Peter scoffs. “I’m injured, not blind. _That_ is not nothing.”

“It’s just a bruise. It’ll go away.” He’s the last person she wants to be talking to about this. “Why do you even care?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s just not very _criminal_ of me, is it?”

And she sees it then. The fear. Why he got defensive earlier, why her knowledge of his past made him lash out like that. He’s afraid she’ll only see him as that. A criminal. Someone unworthy, someone to punish. Olivia mellows. “That’s not what I meant.”

Peter sighs. “Bruises are damage. It doesn’t matter…how you got them…or what they’re meant to mean. Your blood’s already too close to the surface.” When she finds no words to say to that, he changes tactics. “Why are you letting me off?” he asks.

 _I'm not_. But she doesn't say that. Instead, “You can call yourself whatever you like in this state, so long as you commit no crimes under that name. What reason would I have to arrest you?”

“You’ve read the file. If it’s as good as you say it is, all you need to do is choose.”

“I’d rather not.”

After that, all he has left to ask is, “Why?”

Olivia stands. “I’d like to think you’re more than a last name. But, Peter? I can change my mind.” 

That Walter made it his only demand doesn’t even rate among the reasons for the choices she’s made. If this is a mistake, then it is hers to own, hers to make. 

 

***

 

They bring their prisoners into to the meeting room, and they cuff them to their seats. The blood on the table and the blood on the floor has been scrubbed out, wiped off, but the chemical smell of bleach remains. It is a heavy, pungent cloud hovering above them, trapped inside the room. 

They close the door behind them, and they take their seats. Charlie at the head, Olivia to his right, Astrid to his left. Then Nick beside Olivia, and Lincoln across from him, then Walter. Then Peter beside his father, in a painkiller haze, dizzy and shivering, fever working a cold sweat under the blanket around him. Too stubborn to stay out of it. 

Charlie says, “Speak,” and with Walter present as requested, the tale flows easy, goes like this:

It is Sam who begins. “The first thing you have to understand is that we can only tell you what has been written. What was told to us. I can’t guarantee that anything that comes out of my mouth right now is the truth, but it is what I know.”

“Written where?” Lincoln asks. 

“A scientific treatise. _Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie._ It translates to _Destruction Through the Advancement of Technology_. Roughly.”

“A bible,” John murmurs from his chair, disdainful. 

Sam pays him no more mind than he would the annoying buzz of a summer fly. He clears his throat, and he says, “Now, if you’ll let me continue: in the seventies, the government developed a program through DARPA, initially to investigate psychic phenomena, but its goal would change over time, expand into all the realms unknown to us, seeking explanations and uses for the data they found. With the paranoia of the Cold War firmly engrained in people’s minds, and the government seeking new ways of weaponizing anything they could get their hands on, the program grew, and it grew fast. And, as it grew, it split into branches. The Stargate Project was one of those branches, the only one that the public has been made aware of, and the only one that has been shut down, though in reality it simply dissolved into the others. 

The branch that we’re concerned with was set up and developed in a basement lab at Harvard University. The scientists spearheading this part of the program dedicated themselves to proving the existence of other worlds beyond our own.”

“Like what, aliens?” Lincoln again, frowning this time, skeptic. 

“No. All of these worlds were human worlds, and all of them were copies of ours. Universes parallel to our own, different, some in subtle ways. In others, the differences obvious, glaring. The scientists created a window to see into these worlds, to study them, to copy their technology. CD players, flat screens, your cellphones, this is all technology you now own because of the men and women in that lab. Naturally, these tactile advances gave them greater funding than most of the other sides of the program, and that funding gave them the freedom to pursue these other worlds in a purely scientific capacity, so long as they kept delivering results. 

The problem with science…with scientists, I should say, is that they’re rarely satisfied. And the better they are, the more they push the limits of what is possible, what is safe, what is ethical. Eventually, the scientists grew tired of watching. They thought, why copy the technology, when we can _steal it_. Why simply watch, when we can _travel_ there.

And they did. They picked the world that was closest to ours, similar enough, at a glance, a step away in the right direction. They went there, and what they brought back was wonder. Wonder, and fear. This world was more advanced in all the ways that counted. Militarily, most of all. Medically, scientifically, they developed in leaps and bounds greater than our own. The scientists predicted that, if this other world ever acquired knowledge of ours, of the things we’d taken from them and the lengths we’d gone to obtain them, it would lead to war.”

Here, John, with raccoon patches of blue under each eye, breathing through his mouth and speaking in short bursts between inhaling and running out of breath, says, “They were right.”

“Yes,” Sam agrees. “They were right. But before they knew they were right, they believed it, and so they started preparing. Now, before these other worlds ever came into the picture, the scientists had hypothesized that the greatest weapon we had was the human brain in and of itself, if we could learn to use it as one. Psychic phenomena, like I said, was the very beginning of the program. You see, the brain is still, after millennia, the greatest tool we possess. It creates and it destroys more efficiently than any other implement it has come up with, but compared to its potential, that potential that we get peeks into but never fully get to develop…it’s like comparing sticks and stones to the atom bomb. 

They said, if we could access that potential, if we could harness it, we could give our people the best chance at survival. We would be…invincible. The military swallowed that like candy. Back then, that really was the American dream.

The military gave them the time, and it gave them the resources to find a way to achieve this, to create super soldiers, even grow them if possible. To give humanity, but only _our_ humanity, the means that would make it untouchable. Ethics was…a suggestion, by that point. 

The first few trials were disastrous. They started with adults, obviously, in small numbers. Volunteers from the Army, the Air Force, the Navy. The Marines. You name it. It would be much more expedient, the military had told them, if they didn’t have to train their subjects to also be regular soldiers, to obey orders, to respect command. They all died. And after they were dead, the scientists, reviewing their data, found a pattern: they had developed a drug, Cortexiphan, to rid the brain of the limitations keeping that potential from being accessed by the conscious mind, and it was this drug that was overwhelming the subjects’ neural circuitry, unbalancing the chemistry of their brains to levels their bodies had no time to adjust to. It was the drug that killed them. But they found that the speed at which it killed them was inversely proportional to their ages, to the maturity of their brains. The younger the subject, the longer he or she lived before their brain fried.

The next logical step was, of course, to try it on children.

It was sanctioned, and they did it, and it worked. There were two extended trials, running in parallel. The bigger of the two was held in Wooster, Ohio, at the State University day care…and the second in Jacksonville, Florida. At the day care on the Naval Base there.”

“And what did the drug do to the children?” Nick breaks his silence. When Olivia looks at him, she finds him pale, as pale as the wall behind him, dark circles under his eyes, and in his eyes, tears, unspilt, but adding a luminescence to the pain reflected on them. He’s holding on to the arms of his chair tight enough that she fears they might break.

 _Jacksonville_. 

It dawns on her, then, that this is what he’d known. This is what he’d meant. This is the burden he’d been carrying all these years, by himself. Silently, after his stint in St. Jude’s, never complaining. Why everyone labeled him crazy.

Sam nods in acceptance of the question, and there’s pity in the lines of his face, in the shape of his mouth when he replies. “It did everything the scientists said it would. Because they were in early stages of development when the trials began in ’81, the children’s brains were fresh, untouched by the limiting agents of the world. Their bodies were naturally undergoing a constant state of adjustment, so when the first dosage of the drug was introduced, its effects where no greater than those of, say, the flu vaccine. Some kids reacted to it better than others, but in the long run, they were all healthy. They were all alive. As they grew up, the doses built up, and they started exhibiting abilities that were later classified as beyond human. Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Astral Projection. All the comic book stuff. The problem was, they were children. They’d have to grow up before they could be used to defend us. They’d have to be tested, and monitored, and if need be, isolated. More than that, as the Cold War came to a close, the military grew afraid of the public’s retaliation, of what it could mean to have the American people know they’d sanctioned these kinds of procedures on children that could be their own.”

“What did they do?” Lincoln, holding Nick’s hand under the table, keeping him stable.

John says, “They shut them down. Abandoned the program. The scientists erased the children’s memories of the trials, suppressed their abilities. Then they left.”

“You know what’s great about all that?” Peter chuckles, his eyes bloodshot from the drugs, his voice rough. “That it is _insane_. And clearly, so are you.”

Sam grins at that, and the smugness in it is palpable. “Oh, I can prove it, Bishop. Why do you think I asked for your father to be brought here?” To Olivia, he says, “You asked me who I worked for. I can tell you now, that he’s sitting by his son. The scientists’ names were Walter Bishop, and William Bell.”

 

***

 

Laughter rings through the room. It bounces off the walls, hysterical, mad. It takes the pain in his gut to let him know he’s the one doing the laughing. He thinks, _better laughing than crying._ His eyes, burning inside their sockets, follow his father.

Walter is pacing the length of the room, hands fluttering erratically behind his hunched back, clasped in one another, shuffling more than walking, trying to say something. The prisoners have presented their proof, and he has done nothing to reject it. 

Sometimes silence is better than a guilty verdict.

When Peter speaks, he wheezes. “I should have let them kill you. I should have walked away, and let them put a bullet through your head.”

Walter turns at the words, and tears spill from his eyes, down over his cheeks. His voice is small and choked when he says, between sobs, “We were trying to help. All we did was—was make them special, make them more than they were, so they could save us. We were trying to help.”

The people in the room stare in anger, in shock, and they say nothing, hold on to their chairs. Peter sees red. 

Before he notices, without listening to his body’s protests, he’s standing, stumbling forward, advancing on the monster he calls father, who’s now backed in panic against the wall behind him. “You were experimenting on _people_! You were using _children_ as guinea pigs! Children, Walter.”

He never gets closer to the old man, never gets to scare him like he wants to, make him feel the fear of being defenseless, of being smaller and weaker than your attacker. A heavy hand pushes him back, against his chest like an iron brand. When he tries to push through it, he hears “Hey, hey!” and Olivia is standing between them, facing him. As angry as he is but also deadly calm.

He looks at her and he feels dizzy. Over her statuesque, unmoving stance, he snarls, “Don’t you dare make it sound like charity work.”

Then, the pain. Then, a warm hand pushing up the hem of the bowling shirt, touching his arm, touching his face to keep him steady, keep him there. A voice saying, “Peter…Peter, you’re bleeding.”

He thinks, very clearly, _Oh, Fuck._ Doesn’t know if he says it _._

After that, only black. 

 

***

 

Another cell. Another man inside it. It is the only way she knows how to function, how to follow. Do now, think later. Compartmentalization is the only thing that has prevented insanity from setting in.

Thankfully, they dispense with the bullshit. Get to the good stuff without preamble, without avoidance.

“So what were you? My handler?”

John shakes his head, looking grim, mouth a straight line like a slash. “That’s Sam. Yours and Lane’s,” he says. “I was intelligence. Field operative. When I’m here, I’m meant to be protection. How long have you been sleeping with him?”

“Three months, give or take.” He can be so entirely predictable. “How long have you known?”

“About fifteen minutes.” John responds to the sight of her raised eyebrow by saying, ever so serious when confronted head-on, a little angry, “You don’t touch people, Liv. Not in public, and not of your own volition. Not even your family. Not even me.”

“That’s very observant of you,” she says dryly.

“It’s my job to be observant. ”

“And you’d do anything for your job, wouldn’t you?” If she could, she’d growl. “I should know. I found your files. The ones under the bathroom tile? I found all the pictures, all the blueprints. All the diagrams. It was an interesting night.”

“When?”

“July. The same night you called to tell me your assignment had been extended. I took a bath after we hung up, noticed a hollow sound when I stepped on the tile.”

“And here we are.”

“Yes. Here we are.” She takes a small white envelope, folded in half, from the back pocket of her pants. Shows its contents. “I also found these, among the documents.”

Inside the envelope, five-year-old phone call records, and a surveillance video coded into a flash drive. 

John sighs, and she’d believe the regret on his face, if she didn’t know the reason for it was not hurting her, but getting caught. “Liv, I had to.”

“You had to what?” her voice is cold, river calm. “You had to lie? You had to steal evidence? You had to let them destroy everything I worked for?”

“Yes! Yes, I did. Being in that trial had already put you in people’s sights. Winning it would have only gotten you even more attention. I had to get you out. What you’re not understanding is that there are people out there, Olivia, right now, who wouldn’t hesitate to use you like the weapon you were designed to be. They don’t see that you’re more than that. They don’t see a human being, they see a tool. You have no idea, what it cost me to see you like that.” 

“No idea? No idea.” Her fingernails bite into her palms, and her she realizes that she’s shaking from the tension, from the effort it takes to keep herself together, string coherent sentences. “You were watching. I was the one who felt it. It was _my_ life _, my_ career that got destroyed.”

“I lost my job too, remember? I followed you out.”

“No, you chose to leave. It was your choice, nobody made it for you. The FBI wasn’t just a job I wanted, John. It was _who I was_. I fought for that badge since I was nine years old—I fought for it, and I earned it. It was mine. And you took that away from me. You watched Harris tear me apart, knowing that you could have stopped it, and you did nothing. You married me.” When her voice cracks at the end, Olivia steps away, takes a breath, throws a folder filled with legalese on his lap, and follows it up with the disposable Motel 6 ballpoint from the breast pocket of her uniform shirt. “You married me. But I guess that was just to keep an eye on your science experiment. I’d be grateful if you corrected that for the both of us.”

 

***

 

Inside the Sheriff’s Office, alone, the door closed, Olivia breaks down. 

 


	3. December I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you saw the unedited version of one of these chapters, you would run screaming. I certainly want to. This, amongst other things, is why my beta is very brave and should be given a lot of love for devoting hours of her life to beating me with Grammar and "No, Sara, that's not a metaphor." 
> 
> See, she didn't edit that ^^
> 
> TW: this chapter contains mentions of suicidal tendencies, suicide attempts, and people dealing with depression, as well as possibly ableist language and people being shit-heads about mental illness. I have tried to give the topic a good treatment, but I'm not infallible. If these warnings bum you out to the point where you would rather not keep reading, please know that it won't offend me. Self-care should be a priority, after all :)

The world is shaking.

That’s what it feels like, to hold Nick as he trembles in the pool of blood of his kitchen floor, six feet of unflappable good humour turned sharp angles and misery that rattle her bones and the marrow in them. The short, panicked puffs of his breathing land hot like desert winds against the collar of her work shirt, and it is all Olivia can do to hold on to the breadth of his shoulders and wait for the worst of it to pass.

The EMTs clear out of the cabin in a flurry of movement and sound, load the occupied gurney between them into the ambulance and out of sight. Peter's retreat falters at the threshold, draws her wandering focus to him. His face is grim in the red and blue lights of the ambulanceoutside, but it is also questioning; the greasy shirt and the vitreous quality of his eyes tell her of his whereabouts before she called him out to the edge of town, and she wonders if he would have said no, had he been fully sober. This is not his job.

Instead of shouting over the noise, he mouths _do you need me to stay?_

Olivia shakes her head no and he nods. She does not expect him to climb into the ambulance, but breathes easier when he does. Lincoln should have someone with him, in case…well, he's never been known for doing things halfway. Better not to think of that now. Better not think at all. She kicks the bloody knife aside with her boot, and as the siren fades she lets her oldest friend sag against her and drag them down to the ground.

The birch floorboards creak under their combined weight and edge of one of the house’s wooden columnsdigs into her back, but Olivia ignores it all in favor of shifting Nick’s weight off her lap. He is heavy enough that he might squeeze all the air out of her otherwise.

It’s a good thing they are alone. One of the few good things in the bloody, tear stained mess of the night, the last month, their lives, or at least it seems like that. There has been happiness too, a good amount, but there are days when it seems illusory, thrown in only to make the waiting bearable—she knows this about him, she feels it too. Pain is not something meant to be paraded, and the least she can do is let him break down in private, protect him, keep his jagged edges from doing more damage that he will, inevitably, regret later.

There is no telling how much time they spend like this, she can’t really remember looking at the time as she got here, but in the meantime Olivia lets herself absorb the morbid details of the room; the wet cuffs of Nick’s blue flannel pants, the nicks and cuts on the half-frozen soles of his feet (and what the hell was he thinking, walking barefoot into the cold, dressed for bed like he is), the alarming quantity of cooling red blood on pale birch, the grisly, bloodstained fingerprints his hands have left, still warm, on her shirt. The knowledge that this is what they are, both of them; unhinged, meant to harm.

She notices then that the convulsive gulps of air and the scalding tears have given way to a quiet sobbing, a defeatist slackness of limbs and of fingers. He speaks. She strains to hear him over the screaming in her head, and then wishes she hadn’t.

“I killed him,” Nick whispers, more in wet gurgles than words, again and again. “I killed him.”

“Oh, Nicky.” Air leaves her lungs in a rush. In the open room, she shudders.

For his sake, Olivia hopes he’s wrong.

 

***

 

His hand on her shoulder is warm, feels like coal burning through ice. It shakes off some of the tension, some of the numbness, and maybe part of her failed to wake up earlier, with the frantic call that has landed her sitting in a chair outside green double doors labeled “Emergency.” She feels removed, far away from everything, like a sheer curtain has been dropped before her, the world indistinct, shapeless. She takes her eyes away from Nick, sleeping without meaning to on the bench across from her, and looks at Peter. His eyes are heavy and the whites are red instead, but they are a soft red, guileless and exhausted. He drops into the seat beside hers, shovesa steaming styrofoam cup between her palms; he makes sure not to move his hands until she’s aware enough of it that she won’t let it fall.

“Thank you,” Olivia says, so quiet that until he nods she’s unsure if she said it at all. The strong scent of hospital coffee fills her nostrils and she’s sure she’d burn her throat if she tried to take a sip just now, but it is enough to warm her some, inside.

Peter leans back, his spine curling into a tired question mark, the back of his head hitting the wall. He looks at Nick, says, “Surgery's going to take a while. Apparently, the knife went pretty deep into his left wrist, cut a couple of tendons.”

Olivia nods, and he asks the question she’d been expecting since she dropped Nick on the bench hours ago, and caught his eye. She hasn’t been dreading it. She hasn’t really been feeling much. “What happened?”

“It worked.” When he frowns, confused still, she explains. “The tests. The Cortexiphan. What your father did to him, it worked. Sam’s files said he’s a reverse empath, can influence others by making them feel what he feels. He’s been off his meds for a week.”

“Jesus Christ,why?” The words replace his next exhale, come out breathless. It has always felt awkward to shoulder the full weight of his attention—he makes it seem like she might hold the answers to all his questions. She’s not yet sure that it is a responsibility she cares for. Olivia shrugs and looks away. Until tonight she hadn’t known of Nick doing it, let alone the reasons for it. She wonders if she could have stopped it.

Why indeed? Why do all of this? It had seemed pointless not to try, she supposes, inevitable in the blur of the first few days after uncovering the deceptions that had kept them in place, pacified, waiting to be called up. So unreal by definition that they had forgotten to stop and think about the realities of it, that in this thing, this war they didn’t choose, they are soldiers in name but not in training.

Olivia knows how to kill a man with a gun, how to defend herself with bare hands, incapacitate with feet and elbows and knees. She doesn’t know how to set fire to a match without touching it, doesn’t know how to single out objects from another universe on sight. If the ten point text on a stack of reports 4 inches thick, documenting childhood from ages three to eight is to be believed, those were all abilities she was given once; abilities that she was then forced to unlearn.

They’d started with Nick because he remembered everything, because whatever they did to wipe the children’s minds had worked too well on hers, but not at all on his. And because Walter had said it would be easier that way, if he could be spared the pain of being forced to remember the trauma inflicted by going through childhood as a lab rat. Walter, Walter, Walter. Olivia can see a pattern emerging, of the blind leading the blind, shouting at the deaf to follow. A pair of traumatized, stunted kids trusting pieces of their minds to a man that lost his.

She says, “Your father convinced him it would make for better results.”

And she says _your father_ without thinking, doesn’t mean for it to be accusatory, doesn’t mean for it to wound and yet…she doesn’t need to look at him to know the tension around his eyes, the bunching of the muscles of his jaw as he grinds his teeth. She can feel his breathing grow shallow, his shoulders tense, his knee jumping, seesawing against the edge of hers. It’s hard for him to keep still when he’s angry like this.

The rest of the night passes in relative silence. There is nothing to say, other than _I told you this was a bad idea_ , which is a conversation they stopped having with words but keep communicating in frustrated body language and the tension between them, unresolved, wicked. At some point, Nick wakes himself up with a start, a little jump, as if from a falling nightmare. He takes one good, long look at them, Olivia still leaning forward, empty coffee cup in hand, looking back at him; Peter pacing the hallway with a face that would make anyone give him a wide berth on a normal day, and he sighs, drags the heels of his palms over his eyes. She can see the blood still under his fingernails, like he raked them through clay.

“You told him," he says.

Olivia nods, though it is not a question.

“Good.” Nick grabs his knees, makes to stand and wavers, catches himself against the wall. He holds out his hand in a placating gesture when she wordlessly offers to help, shakes his head. “I’m getting coffee.”

“Okay.” She slumps back into her seat, but doesn’t get to breathe the tension out. Beside her, Peter catches on, tries to follow his retreat. She grabs his arm, holding him tight around the mass of his bicep. “Don’t,” she shakes her head to make her point. “Let him go.”

Peter frowns at her, concern and disbelief fighting to be the expression he wears. “You’re not worried?”

If I told you everything that worries me, Olivia thinks, you’d beg me to stop long before I was done. “About what? Mass suicide in the ER?”

“For starters.”

 The barely restrained condescension in his expression chafes; there’s uncertainty to it, like it is simply the default for when he has no idea what’s expected of him, and it is times like this when she starts to think violence might be acceptable, wants to punch it into his thick skull that people aren’t math he needs to understand. It is rarer on him as the days go by, but he is most like Walter when he looks like that. It makes him seem cruel when he’s anything but.

_Deep breaths, Dunham._

 She looks back at Nick, posture rigid, out of earshot, hand holding him up against the wall as the coffee machine pours. Her voice is tight when she speaks. “There is no one more aware of how dangerous he is than him. He’s been here for hours, and he’s not feeling any better now than he was earlier, if it hasn’t already happened, it won’t.”

“And you’re sure of that, how?” Peter crosses his arms, dislodges her hand.

“I trust him.” She’s not sure of anything anymore, but this is Nick. She knows him well enough to know the last thing he’d wish is to make more of a mess of things, and trust is something he sorely needs. He may not ask for it, but it is the one thing she can give.

The clock on the wall is pointing somewhere around four in the morning when the double doors at the end of the hallway swing open. The doctor that comes out approaches so slowly she feels like runningto him, get this night, this morning, over with.He says something, a very long and wordy something, but Olivia doesn’t listen, keeps her eyes and ears on Nick, who all but falls back into his chair in relief, lets himself go, shoulders shaking, limbs in disarray. The doctor laughs out loud.

Instinctively, Olivia pushes her palm onto the back of Nick’s neck, squeezes softly, lets his head rest on her thigh. “Nick,” she says, not loud but firm. Commanding. He exhales. The laughter dies down as Nick regains his breath, centers himself. At her side, Peter stiffens, his eyes grow wide, but it matters little. Lincoln is going to make it. Knowing that, Nick just might.

 

***

 

They move Lincoln into a room but Nick can’t bring himself to step over the threshold. She can see the hand he’s placed on the doorjamb shake like he’s on a caffeine overdose, can feel the bubble of tension he's trying to breathe through. Inside the room, Lincoln slumbers, to all appearances more peaceful in his drug induced sleep, hospital slip and stitched-up wrists than Olivia has ever felt.

When Nick speaks his words are broken, hoarse. “Can we go?"

“Go?”

Nick takes a shaky breath, and blinks hummingbird-fast. He looks away from the hospital bed, from the man in it and the rise and fall of his chest. “He's okay, you said he's okay and the doctor said he's okay, and I want to go. Please, let's go.”

“You want to leave.” Olivia can’t hide her surprise, raises her eyebrows in reflex. He isn’t desperate anymore, it’s not there in his voice. This is shame. This is fear, and she can’t protect him from either. Softly, she asks, “You don’t think he’s going to want to see you when he wakes up?”

He shakes his head, the lines on his face deep like trenches carved into soft earth, his features contorted, and he is Laocoon in a snake pit, in flesh and blood and thunderous technicolor, his sons forgotten, dead on the ground. “I can't, Olive. I’m not…I’m not brave like you, or strong, and I can't go in there. I did this to him, I made him...I made him grab that knife and I made him hurt himself, and he's going to wake up and look at me, and what if he's afraid of me? And what if he isn't? He should be afraid of me."

Olivia wants to shake her head, tell him _you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met_ , but it would be futile—it is not a truth he’s willing to accept. She wants to tell him _it wasn’t your fault_ , but she doesn’t want to lie. Instead, and hesitantly, she takes a page from Peter’s book, grabs Nick’s hand, pulls him to her. Before today, the last time she hugged him she was still taller and stronger, and now his chin touches the edge of her hair, prickly and quivering as his head slides down to hide in the dip of her shoulder. The back of his neck is taut rope.

Nick says, begs of her, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

“Do you trust me?”

He raises his head. “You know that I do,” he tells her, and there it is again, that look, that conviction that feels almost religious, itching under her skin. It has followed her through life, like he has, intermittent in its appearances but never far. There is no comfort, no guidance, no salvation, redemption or release she can give. Olivia wants no part of it.

“You won’t hurt anyone,” she tells him, her voice filled with a certainty she does not feel. “I won’t let you.”

“If I do…if I hurt someone, anyone…Olive, you have to stop me.” He steps back, lets her arms fall until they come to rest by her sides, grabs her by the shoulders. She understands the strength of his grip is necessary to keep his fingers still, but it stings. She has always bruised easily. “If you need to shoot me, you shoot to kill. You shoot me. Promise me you will.”

“Nick…” _Don’t make me do this, Nick, please._

“Promise me, Olive.”

Olivia sighs, lets the weight of the words pull her shoulders down. If this is what he needs, then so be it. “I promise.”

For a moment she thinks his looking away from her is Nick gearing up to say something else, to thank her maybe—thank her for promising to put a bullet in him in the less than extraordinary circumstance in which he accidentally murders the people he loves with the magical properties of feelings—and the thought tastes like ash in her mouth. Then she hears the steps behind her, feels the looming, electric tension wash over her back, run down the stretch of skin and cloth between her shoulder blades, and she understands.

She is already turning when Peter’s fingertips brush against her waist, there and gone in the instant it takes her to find his shuttered face, pale, hard eyes flickering over her before settling squarely on Nick.

The reason for his approach, after hours of pacing the hall well away from her, reveals itself in the form of his phone, which he holds out to her. By way of explanation he says, “It's Charlie.”

Olivia takes the phone, steps back from the headache brewing frombetween Peter’s pigheaded wariness and Nick’s heartbroken shame. “Dunham.”

Charlie’s gruff voice echoes when he speaks. He says, “I’ve been calling you for the past hour,” and the annoyance in his tone is only there to mask the worry of his words.

“My battery died. What’s up?”

“You still at the hospital?”

“Yeah. They just moved Lincoln to a room.”

“That's good.” He sighs, and she can picture him pinching the bridge of his nose with the hand not holding the phone. “Look, I'm sorry to do this to you right now, but I need you and Bishop to go check out some reports of a shooting at the Richardson farm. If Astrid wasn’t in the middle of fielding a domestic, I'd send her."

“It’s fine.” There is a sense of serenity that the mention of work brings, attached to the feeling of having a purpose, of knowing what that purpose is and being confident in her ability to fulfill it. It gives her a comfort in her own skin that she rarely feels. “We'll be there as soon as we can.”

The sheriff grunts, thanks her, hangs up.

Olivia straightens, turns to her headache-in-waiting. “So. There’s a crime scene.”

“I’ll get the car.” Peter sighs, mutters something obscene as he leaves.

 Nick is slower in his retreat, but he looks determined not to stop her, to show her he’s fine. It breaks her heart. He says, “Go. I can cab it.”

She shakes her head. “I was gonna say that you could come with us, if you want. Charlie won't mind.”

The relief on his face makes her glad she offered. “Okay.” With the hint of a proper smile, Nick asks, “Does this mean I'm finally deputized?”

 

***

 

It is a 45 minute drive between the hospital and the old brick-and-mortar house that marks the start of the farm, which serves as living quarters of its owner and a few relatives that double as farmhands, but at least the drive is a calm one. In the spirit of avoiding that headache, Olivia lets Peter’s station hunting habit run rampant, doesn’t comment when Nick folds out on the backseat and pretends to sleep. She knows he would be listening in if they were to speak.

Beyond a few stray comments not a word is uttered, and Olivia’s glad of it. There is enough noise in her head as it is. Eventually, the hub of people and buildings of Lakeside recedes, gives way to the forests and fields that make up most of the piece of land she’s paid to guard.

The Richardson land is the oldest dairy farm in the county, a 40 acre collection of semi-flat pastures between rolling hills that never stop reeking of cow. As they step out of the car, the reason for that becomes apparent.

Peter verbalizes faster and better than her, as is often the case. He groans, says, “It would seem there’s a shit problem on the property.”

“Accurate,” she tells him, willing to play along to preserve the fragile peace they've achieved, “But non-descriptive. You could do better.” She avoids the irregular clumps of snow on the field as she exits the patrol car. She has been here before, is used to it.

 “Well, excuse me for not being verbose about standing ankle deep in snow-covered cow shit here. Pardon me for not regaling you with an epic poem on manure.” The noise he makes is indignant, but the twist of his lips might be a smirk. From this angle it is hard to see through the beard.

She looks down at his feet when she moves around to let Nick out, and yes, that is indeed an ungodly heap of cow shit he's standing in. It takes some effort to stifle the laughter. “You’re not getting those boots back on my patrol car, just so you know.”

“I have a question,” Nick says, squinting at the moonlight reflected on snow and climbing out of the car. “Can I film this? For posterity.”

They answer in unison, a resolute “No.”

“Killjoys,” he mutters, and though the shadows in his eyes have not seen fit to depart, it is close enough to his normal self that it makes Olivia chuckle and smile outright. It earns her a _look_ from her partner, who’s either having trouble understanding why Olivia would believe in her friend above all else, or simply doesn’t want to, but that’s fine.

Eventually one of them will lose patience and they’ll have to have that talk about fears and feelings and trust, instead of pretending everything is fine, no lies were told, and nothing went wrong. But eventually is not now and she remains content with avoiding that particular cesspit for as long as she can.

Their arrival does not go unnoticed. The door to the main house opens to reveal old Ben Richardson dressed for the weather, a knit cap visible under the brim of his Stetson and his blue-denim coveralls tucked into knee-high rubber boots, probably waiting for them since Charlie called. He approaches the car with the practiced ease of someone used to avoiding the piles of muck across his property, walking stick in hand.

They meet him in the middle, and Olivia shakes his hand. “Ben.”

“Deputy.” He grabs her gloved hand in both of his, then looks at the men behind her with suspicion, probably noticing the lack of official insignia on either. She’s lucky they’ve met before, lucky she never leaves home without her gun or her badge; the man can be stubborn about details like that. “Thank you for coming.”

“Just doing our jobs, Ben. We got some reports about a shooting up here on the property, is there anything you can tell me about that?”

Ben Richardson nods, white-and-gold moustache dipping twice into his scarf. “I made ‘em. Fired a couple of rounds with my shotgun sometime ‘round four this morning. We been getting some cougars here the past couple o’ winters, so I always bring it with me when it’s dark, never know what’s gonna be out there.”

“What were you shooting at?”

“Something that was moving too fast to be one of ‘em cows, that’s for sure.” Richardson starts walking down into the farm proper, motions for them to follow. He grabs a lantern from the bench by the wall of the house, flicks it on to illuminate the path as they walk. From behind her, Peter follows suit with his Maglite. Richardson explains, “Don’t sleep much anymore so I was taking a walk down to the milking shed, like anyone here can tell you I do every morning, and soon as I get down that small hill you see over there,” he points at the slight incline over by the fence some fifty yards ahead, “I can smell leather cooking—and every rancher worth a damn in these parts can recognize that smell, believe me. It’s the same as when we brand our cattle.

“So I followed the smell to the first of the barns where we keep the tractors, and I found one of our little calves fallen on the electric fence, shocked to death. Her hide was still burning. Y’see, someone cut the wire, through the middle so the current kept flowing on one end and killed the rest, made a hole big enough a normal human man can step through.”

Richardson pauses a moment to catch his breath, huffing wetly. The plumes of smoke from his mouth and nose hit the ring of light from the lantern like fog creeping up the rolling beam of an overworked lighthouse.He coughs and it’s a smoker’s cough, rattling and violent.

When he can, he continues on, says, “I woke up the boys and girls and sent them to comb through the fields and buildings in sets of three—took my grandson Bill with me. I figured I could call you people soon as we found who did it, save all of us a lotta trouble and time. When we got to the milking shed I told Bill to go in and check for anything strange. He had his whistle on him so I was less worried about letting him go all on his own. It was while I was walking around the building that I saw the shit who cut the fence, just a dark person-shape really, hunched over like a wino puking. So I call out to him, or her, whatever, and the little asshole takes off straight over to the dead side o' the fence—that's how I know it was him that cut it. I shot him twice and hit him twice, I know because I saw him stagger, but he still got away."

Olivia waits to see if he’ll add anything else to the statement, gives it a full minute before she asks, “You mind if we walk down to the shed and see for ourselves?”

“Please,” Richardson touches a hand to his hat, leans heavily on the walking stick by his side. “I’ll give you the tour.”

The tour, as he calls it, ends up being a fifteen minute walk over uneven terrain on a slight descent, avoiding iced-over rocks, and frozen troughs, and cows, and the cows’ little hidden caches of shit. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Nick walking behind her, focused on the ground and shivering in the old jeans and the sweaters and the scarf she shoved at him before driving to the hospital in haste. He should have stayed in the car, kept himself warm.

A voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Charlie reminds her that the second most common cause of death in the state, coming in just behind traffic accidents, is hypothermia brought on by the combination of alcohol and sudden temperature drops, and Olivia broadens her steps, quickens her pace, wills for him to follow.

The milking shed is a mammoth of a building, all wooden logs and frosted tin roofing, a few thin, long windows along the very top to let warmth in during the longer days, and some sunlight during the shorter ones. The lights are on inside, but this is the kind of building that keeps them like that regardless of the time, regardless of the season. They use enough power that it would cost the Richardsons more to turn everything back on after shutting down than it does to simply keep it running steadily month after month.

Richardson leads them around the barn, shows them the spot he described as the scene of the shooting.

Olivia asks to borrow the man’s lantern and he gives it over immediately, earnestly—they’ve had a good rapport over the past couple of years, after Charlie started sending her in whenever there was something vaguely law related to do within the confines of the farm, citing what he said was the old man’s evident infatuation with her and her ability to deal with his temper. The memory still makes her roll her eyes.

There are spots of blood here and there, tiny pools of crimson by the wall of the shed, on the spilled-over hay and the slush of the snow on artificially warmed earth, but what gets her attention is the smattering of silver between them.

“Peter, could you come here for a second?” Her voice carries in the winter air, echoes over the pastures. It remains steady.

His steps are loud, making a dry, scratchy sound as he kicks through the blanket of snow.It's not a very steep walk from where he stood, poking at the cut fence with a branch of rotten wood and his leather boot, but Olivia can hear him grunting as the descending terrain forces him to change his gait, still favouring his injured side. She has a vague recollection of him telling Astrid about the fun of having Walter take the stitches out. “You need me?”

“Tell me what you see.”

He huffs and frowns at her, but steps forward, inspects the same ground as her. He catches on quickly. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Peter crouches over the hay, touches a hand to the blood and the silver and tests its consistency between his fingers. He looks up at her, and the harsh light from the lantern against the deep indigo darkness of the morning makes the angles of his face sharpen, makes his cheekbones seem starved, the hair on his face a wild, dark smudge. The look is dour.

 “Mercury,” he tells her.

 

***

 

They drop Peter off at Mabel’s, grab a pair of coffees and a bag of multigrain bagels, and make the short drive to the Eight Ball. While she has no intention of enduring Sam’s presence for any length of time, the Eight Ball happens to be where the town’s resident madman is in the process of supervising work being done to turn the storage room out back into a provisional lab. Provisional because while Olivia is not interested in having Massive Dynamic see the part of the process where they shake and cry and vomit, she is aware, despite popular belief (John), that eventually the company’s lawyers will offer the kind of deal they would be fools to refuse, and will be damned for accepting.

Walter’s got a couple of things she needs him to answer for.

If it weren’t for Nick at her side and the apprehension that keeps rolling off him and crashing back like the tide on a shipwreck, Olivia doubts she’d be able to carry this imminent conversation and still remain calm. And by calm she means rational enough to not commit cold-blooded murder with her bare hands.

The thing about empathy, reversed or otherwise, is that the mood of the places and the people around you will inevitably alter your own, and so balance of the emotional kind is something Olivia, for everyone’s sake, needs to maintain.

As they arrive through the rear entrance of the bar they are welcomed by the sight of Walter Bishop slave-driving the workmen from Mackenzie Construction about, pointing and slapping and insulting—something about proper ventilation and the arrangement of tables. Astrid, who has been diligently archiving the Cortexiphan trial files from the floor safe in Sam’s office and cross referencing them with the military research and personnel files that John kept in his rented basement, has apparently given up on trying to curve the man’s latest tirade and lies with her head down on the office desk, her face in her palms.

The office is one of those prefabricated drywall-and-plywood things, dropped on a raised cement platform, overlooking the rest of the room. It is larger on the inside than its outward appearance would suggest, equipped with a hip-tall, avocado coloured fridge in one corner, one of those ancient metallic file cabinets, a desk and a wide leather couch; off to the side, on the opposite wall from the fridge, is a red door leading to a bathroom with a faucet, toilet and an old claw-foot tub Olivia’s sure Sam bought for less than ten bucks at some garage sale in the summer. The floor safe lies open to the side of the couch, the carpet that usually covers it removed. It has all the makings of a small apartment. A hide-out, she supposes, knowing what she knows.

Olivia knocks on the office door before approaching, avoids Walter for a little bit longer.

Astrid raises her head. “Hey.”

“Bad morning?” Olivia asks, looking at the explosion of paper all around the room, on the desk, atop the cabinet, piled high on the half of the couch cushions not already occupied by neatly folded blankets and a pair of pillows.

“I’d say you have no idea, but I think it’s just been a different kind of awful for all of us,” Astrid says, looking between her and Nick, who waves at her half-heartedly and moves to sit on the arm of the couch, by the desk, looking pained by the shrill tone of Walter’s voice filtering in from outside. He cringes like a boy being lectured, awaiting punishment. “I heard about Lincoln.”

“Yeah.” Olivia has nothing more to say to that. “Walter seems worse than usual.”

“He’s frustrated.” Astrid sighs. “And he’s afraid Peter is never going to speak to him again—his words. He had a little breakdown about an hour ago.”

Ever since The Incident in November, Peter has been doing his utmost to spend as little time as possible around Walter, going so far as to be caught sleeping in one of the cots at the county jail a few times and, by all reports, on the couch here in Sam’s office more than would be considered permissible for someone with a home and a steady job. All of this perhaps in a concerted effort not to strangle his father, which she can understand better than most, but the damage it has done to Walter’s precarious hold on sanity goes beyond anything Olivia has witnessed before.

It doesn’t excuse him, or his actions, or his past, but there is a part of Olivia that feels for him. Understands. There is probably very little Walter Bishop would not do for his son's love.

She shudders to think what he would be capable of, if he did not have it.

“I need to talk to him. Alone. Can you…?”

“Get rid of the Mackenzie boys? Sure. They could use a break from the lecturing on proper lab regulations anyway.” Astrid stands, stretches her back.

The men are gone the second the word “break” is mentioned, relief in their faces as they make themselves scarce, cursing at the old man and not bothering to keep it down. Walter is left rudderless, pacing about the tables and moving glass items that clink together in his trembling hands. He only notices her as she grabs him by the arm and hegives a small jolt of surprise. For a moment it is as if he cannot recognize her, the way he searches her face for familiarity, raising a chilled, soft hand to her jaw.

Olivia steps back before he makes contact, says his name. Once she has his attention she explains the situation, mentally congratulating herself when her voice remains level and her hands do not tremble.

“Did you bring Mr. Lane with you?” Walter asks. He hunches towards her, an absent look in his eyes even though he remains on topic and seems to be aware of all that she just told him. “Is he alive?”

“Yes, Walter, he’s sitting in the office right now.”

“Oh, that is excellent, my dear.” He rubs his hands together, reaches into his coat pocket for a piece of whatever form of sugar he’s chosen to eat this week. “I should like to see him.”

“Not until you tell me what you want to see him for.” Olivia crosses her arms over chest, blocks him from a direct path to the office, and to Nick in it.

“It is necessary that I keep scrupulous records about his physiology,” Walter explains, with a pinched expression that reminds her that this man enjoyed a power trip or two when he was younger and saner, at the expense of many. He shows a definite aversion to having his methods questioned. “Especially any changes that could be attributed to the resurgence of his abilities. It will dictate their development, their expansion.”

“Expansion.” Olivia grabs onto the word, onto the possibilities beneath it. “You mean it could get worse?”

“Worse? I take it Mr. Lane did not mean for this incident you mention to occur?” There is a childlike curiosity that accompanies the question, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that Nick would want to avoid killing the people around him whenever his self-worth took a dive.

“No, Walter.” Olivia grits her teeth. “He didn’t. The man in the hospital is his partner.”

“Oh. I see. That is certainly unfortunate.”

“Walter, you asked me if he was alive.” Her voice is more than a little strained. “Was there any risk of him dying?”

“Well, one could think he might have turned suicidal thought into action, what with the psychic load of his abilities bearing down on him. It is strange, though.” He ruminates on the thought before he says it, long enough that she feels like shaking him. “Was he taking no medication? A condition such as his while running these experiments, it would be irresponsible of him—”

“Walter, he is—he was. You told him to quit it. You said it would be better for the experiments.”

“Did I?”

“You don’t remember this?”

“I’m afraid not. My memory can be spotty at times, especially with ketamine.”

Ketamine. He’s not even lucid as he thinks, as he says all of this. “You did what you did to him, knowing this kind of thing was possible, that it could happen; you told him to quit his medication, and you don’t remember any of it? Walter, a man almost died because of what you did!”

“But he did not die, did he?”

“That doesn’t make it right!” Olivia slaps her hands against the table, startles him, but he does not shrink back like part of her expects him to. Instead, he straightens, reverts back to the cold, cold man she got a glimpse of the morning after this all went to shit and turned into a science fiction script. And this man is all self-important rage to counter the madness.

“Did he come off them _progressively_?” This Walter snarls. “Because if he had he would have retained some of their effects as his ability manifested and the boy’s lover would be fine! Don’t blame me for someone else’s _idiocy_!”

“Walter!”Astrid’s voice cuts through the poison and the bile. “What did we talk about?”

“I didn't do anything,” crazyWalter whines, curling back into himself.

“You just called someone an idiot.” Astrid cocks her hip, standing in the doorway that connects the bar kitchen to the storage room, plants her hands on her belt and glowers at him. “You don't think that's rude?”

Form the doorway Nick sighs, surprises her. She was focused so tightly on Walter that Nick moving from the office couch flew past her. He says, “Let him. He's right. I am an idiot.”

Astrid turns to him, face still set between astonishment and outrage. “Well, a _little_ ,” she tells him emphatically, “but he doesn't have to say it like that.”

“There is a chance that he could learn to control it.” Walter interrupts, voice grave and lucid, like the last half of their current conversation has just been deleted from his mental record.

“What?” Olivia turns back to him.

“You were there when it happened yes? While he was still upset?”

“Yes, I was.”

Walter nods. “And he did not affect you. You did not catch his mood?”

“No.” Her head feels like it might burst with the effort of following the conversation, the jumps in logic, the non-sequiturs. The things Walter infers and proposes, takes for truths. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It may be that you are immune to him, that you are immune to each other’s abilities, as a result of your participation in the tests during early childhood. If I’m correct it could work to our advantage. You said he appeared to calm down on your command? Your touch?”

“Yes.”

Walter paces, hums, says, “That makes sense.”

Olivia runs a hand through her hair, undoes her loose ponytail further. “How does it make sense, Walter?”

“If William and I followed the regulations in place for this sort of experimentation, we would have paired you off, like the buddy system at summer camp. We would have encouraged close friendships to form between you. You see, the building of bonds is important, it allows children to feel less alone in strange situations, safer when in danger. It normalizes the environment, which makes the final data output of the experiment much more reliable. What matters is that always, in these cases, there is a strong child, and a weak one, and the weak one learns to takes cues from the other, direction.” Walter pauses, steps close enough that Olivia retreats, steps away from him. “I don’t remember much, about those days, about the experiments, but I remember one thing—”

“You were always the strong one.” Olivia is looking at Walter, but it is Nick who says it, Nick who leaves the office doorway and approaches, countenance fraying. Nick who finishes the statement. Walter looks surprised, but nods, and she has no choice but to listen to his words. Nick keeps speaking but can’t look at her, looks at the ground instead. “They said it all the time, the grown-ups. I would cry, and you would comfort me. If I was scared, you’d stay beside me, you’d show me that the thing I was afraid of couldn’t harm me. You were always the strong one. You still are.”

“You’re saying I can help him control it,” Olivia says, breathless under the weight of the words as they leave her throat. “That I can teach him.”

“Yes, my dear,” Walter confirms. “I think you can.”

“How?”

The question gives Walter pause. “More testing, but of a different kind. You would endure the tests together, help each other out.” The old man paces as the thought coalesces across the sectors of his brain, neurons firing almost visibly. Absently, Olivia wonders if he’s looking to wear a path into the ground. Then, “We would need to start you off alone, of course, as we did him, but you would have each other going forward. I posit that this would allow for a more even, and bearable, distribution of the psychic burden of the experiments, for both of you. It would also be advisable that you share a living space, at least while you learn to control your gifts in situations without much stress. As a set of checks and balances, you understand.”

“We can do that.” Nick says, some strange hope lighting up the backs of his eyes, like mirrors reflecting Walter’s sudden light. It dawns on her that it might be conditioning, this ease with which he moves around the lunacy that comes out of that thin-lipped mouth, and accepts it for gospel, his comfort with the scientist artificial, not natural to Nick’s own mind-- put there out of a necessity to control unruly children with killer abilities, and bring future weapons to heel.

Nick looks at her, earnest, questioning. “Can’t we? Olive, you could take the guest room. I’m sure Lincoln won’t mind.” He frowns, bites his lip. “If he still wants to live with me, I mean.” The last part is delivered quietly, brokenly, in a voice much more like his.

The sudden nausea will not let her respond. How much of him, she thinks, how much of her, is a product of this man? How many of her actions, how many of her habits and choices and desires were ideas burned onto the white canvas of her mind during childhood? Is anything her own?

“There’s one more thing.”

“What, Walter?” She croaks.

“You would need supervision. Ideally from someone with a scientific background, who can document occurrences as your bond reforms and your abilities develop. Any small detail could be significant.”

“You mean you. You want to live with us so you can watch us.” She left the bagels in their bag, she thinks, and it’s a good thing. It would have made her day so much worse, to have something to vomit at the moment.

What terrifies her, what is sure to add to her nightmares, is that she can see the logic in the explanations, in the steps proposed. Does that not mean she is every bit as insane as him?

“Yes,” Walter says. “I believe that would be best.”

 

***

 

“Walter,” Astrid calls from somewhere in the office that can’t be seen through the open doorway. Breaks the tension in the room like a rock crashing on a pane of tempered glass. “I’m going back to work. At the station. Away from you. If I get a single complaint for either Julie or Sam, or, god help you, any of the patrons in this bar, you can say goodbye to that rhubarb pie recipe you asked for.” She comes out with her jacket on, scarf loose around her neck and a white cardboard box in her hands which she then proceeds to shove at Nick. “And you, mister, are going to go back to the hospital as soon as someone can drive you, and you’re going to give this to Lincoln with your own two hands. Am I understood?”

Nick grabs the box, grimaces. “And this, Astrid, is why you will one day covertly run the world.”

"Oh, no, you are not changing the subject, Nicholas. I said, am I understood?"

Nick stands up a little straighter, says, “Yes, ma'am.”

She pats his shoulder. “Great. I'll see you later.”

As the smaller woman walks past the table she’s leaning against, Olivia manages to convince one of her hands to reach out and touch her sleeve. The shock and revulsion have still not worn off and won’t for a very long time, but compartmentalization is a skill she has always excelled at, be it by someone else’s design or her own. And because Astrid remains, steadfast as always, even after everything that has been asked of her. “Thank you,” she says.

“Don’t mention it. He needs people around him that understand. And so do you.” Astrid shakes her head, looks back at the old man munching on liquorice, muttering nonsense to himself. “I can tell you one thing, though: Peter is not going to like this.”

“No, he won’t.”

 

***

 

“Are you sure it was a shapeshifter at the Richardson’s? For all we know it could have been a cow thief and a broken thermometer.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

He really does not. “This is getting out of proportion.” Charlie runs a palm down his chest, grabs his belt with both hands just to have somewhere to put them. “We have no idea where they go, no idea what they look like but for the bodies we’ve found, and who’s to say they haven’t gotten better at disposing of them and there’s actually dozens more out there? What the hell are we even doing? We should have had the national guard all over this months ago.”

“You know why we couldn’t,” Olivia says, standing by the couch, looking out the window at the people walking hurriedly outside, trying to get to their parked cars or somewhere inside the surrounding buildings, fleeing from the cold. “Why we still can’t.”

“I know.” She can see the worry on his face as he stops pacing and lets himself fall into his chair. Then, “It’s…Sonia’s due to give birth as soon as next month, Liv, and all I can think of right now, is packing her in the truck with a couple of bags and a shotgun and getting the fuck out of dodge.”

“Maybe you should.”

“And do what? Leave you to handle all of this when you’ve got a few tons of your own shit to deal with? I’d like to think I’m better than that.” He grabs the bottle of water on the desk, takes a long gulp. “What did Bishop have to say about this?”

“Which one?”

“The crazy one.”

Olivia sighs. _He said I can save them, if I can go back to being someone I can’t remember._ “He thinks blood tests might be our only chance of telling these things apart.”

“Then I guess we’ll do that.” He thinks about it for minute, then says, “Go back to the Richardson’s and take blood samples from all of them, just in case. I’ll get Tony to give me a court order.”

Olivia frowns at that. Anthony Larkin may be his childhood friend, he may even owe the sheriff his job at the courthouse, but a court order needs reasons for existing other than the whim of the man in control of the law.

The less questions get asked about what goes on at the Lumber County Sheriff’s Department, the better things will go for them all.

“Tell him it’s something to do with a cattle virus or something. Salmonella can be transmitted to people. Tell him the blood we took from the crime scene came out positive for it and we’d like to test the farmhands and cattle in the area to prevent an outbreak. I don’t think anyone wants to deal with the possibility of having the CDC all over town, so he should buy it.”

“You think on your feet, I like that.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “You _could_ always give me a raise.”

“I could,” Charlie says. “But then that would mean less money for donuts out of tax payer dollars, and that’s just unacceptable.” And then his expression shifts, turns grave. He asks, “How’s Nick holding up?” not a trace of judgement in the question or his stance, and Olivia loves him for it. Charlie Francis is a good man.

“As well as he can, considering the circumstances.”

Charlie huffs, leans back in his chair. “If there’s anything I can help with, just let me know.”

“I will.”

His cellphone beeps, and he takes it out of his jacket pocket, a jacket that has seen better days and lies strewn over the back of the chair. As he reads the text, he frowns. He texts back, waits.

“What’s up?”

A second message beeps in before he can answer that.

The sheriff laughs as he stands, and his stoic expression turns into the goofiest grin Olivia has ever seen on him. “I have to run. It appears my kid is demanding a pint of Mint-Chocolate Chip ice cream from the womb.”

 

***

 

Astrid is right; Peter doesn't like it at all.

Breaking the news to the younger Bishop goes worse than she thought it would. And it's not like she needs his permission but this would go a loteasier if the legal guardian of the crazy sexagenarian agreed to back her up with the plan. Alas, no such luck to be had (later, Olivia will reflect that the outburst was to be expected; it was a fragile peace that held them, a very thin thread to be pulling on so desperately).

“You want to do _what_?” His expression is incredulous. He’s stopped buttoning his uniform shirt over the thermal henley that has become a fixture on him, shirt collar dark with the excess water from his shower, drops his hands to his sides.

Olivia takes a deep breath, tries again. “Your father thinks that if Nick is having trouble controlling his...ability, it might be necessary to keep a closer eye on him, and frankly, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me, he's the best shot we have at figuring this out, so I don't see a reason not to let him watch us.”

“Olivia, are you listening to yourself?” Peter doesn’t raise his voice, but she can tell he wants to. His tone is urgent, furious. “This is the same man that convinced Nick to stop taking his medication, while drugging him with the closest thing you get to Substance D in the world of FDA-rejected drugs. It’s his fault Lincoln tried to kill himself with a fucking kitchen knife. You can’t seriously be thinking that letting Walter do what he wants is a good idea, and if you are, let me disabuse you of the notion: it is not.”

“Do you have a better idea?” It slips out in her frustration, and there is more bite to the words than she means them to have, but Olivia barrels on. This is not about her, and not about him, and it needs to be done. “Peter, he thinks I can help him control it. Thinks I might be immune to it, because I was a part of the same trials as a child. He says it's possible that I can prevent him from hurting anyone else…I can’t say no to that. Nick’s already agreed to it, and I don’t think it can get worse than this. I don't see how.”

“ _Nick_ ’s not thinking straight!” He gestures wildly, grabs at the hair on the back of his head. “And apparently neither are you. That man is a menace to everyone around him, 24 hours a day, and you want him under the same roof so it’s easier for him to go screwing around with your _head_? Tell me something: do you have a death wish? Because there are easier ways of getting that done than getting my father to fry you from the inside out with his special-brand smack. Hey, maybe Nick can help, since you trust his judgement so fucking much.”

In the shape of his shoulders, the furrows in his brow, the twitching of his jaw, irascible all, he is his father’s son. His words are a slap to the face. They burn in judgement, and Olivia has never done well at not reacting when attacked. She has gotten as far as she has by punching back. “Get out.”

“With pleasure.” He grits it out, angry, truly angry at her for the first time. The office door thunders shut as he goes.

When the glass panel on the door ceases its rattling, Olivia looks up, finds Nick waiting tenatively at the entrance of the changing room, hand on the jamb. Finds the reason the words hurt so much. The smile he gives her is sad, understanding and apology all in one.

_We’re the same, you and I._

 

***

 

With pleasure, Peter says, and he means it when the Vista Cruiser roars past the blue sign that cheerfully tells him he’s now leaving Lakeside (pop. 5673), and Come Back Soon!

Fat fucking chance.

He’s done with this town of self-sacrificing imbeciles. He’s done with the shit weather that’s probably the thing that is freezing everybody’s brains into agreeing to shit ideas, and he’s done with the three am wake-up calls, and the _righteousness_ , and the interminable coffee cups, and the need to piss in back alleys in -20 weather because of the fucking coffee cups. He’s done with the guilt. He is done being an unwilling fucking extra in the real life remake of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers. He is done with the pseudoscientific shit-fest that keeps on giving, and he is utterly fucking done with his fucking father.

They can all rot in hell. He’s going back to the desert. It’s warm there.

 

***

 

Olivia keeps moving, keeps doing the things that need to be done. It has always fallen to her to make the hard decisions, sacrifice things so that others can take them for granted; she doesn’t resent whomever it was that chose her for that. Someone has to.

She doesn’t stop for anything, doesn’t stop for anyone. It’s a sound strategy. She has lived with it her entire life. She looks to Nick at her side. “You ready for this?”

“No,” he admits. “Would it be very awkward if I begged you to hold my hand?”

“The begging part might be.” She smiles, offers her hand. “A little bit.”

They walk through the glass double doors, which open automatically once they get close enough and the blasting heat and buzz of the hospital pulls them in. Olivia lets him lead, lets him walk through the long, powder blue corridors at his own speed, understands just how important this is for him.

When they reach the closed room and the orderly standing guard outside it, Nick takes a deep breath, lets go of her hand. “Thank you, Olive. For all of this.”

“You would do the same for me,” she says, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that he would be there if she needed him.

Nick can only nod in response. He steps forward, enters the room.

Inside the room, Lincoln Lee opens his eyes at the noise of the opening door, drowsy from the sedatives they’ve seen fit to keep him under, and turns his unfocused eyes towards the shape of his boyfriend, slowly closing in. Olivia can see, from her place in the doorway, the moment recognition dawns.

There is no fear in the look.

 

***

 

Some two hours southbound, the I-94 turns into the I-90, gets swallowed by it, and Peter starts paying attention to the speed limit, stops seeing red. He pulls over, steps out and regroups. There’s a manila folder filled with thick wads of money where he left it, under the cushions of the backseat, and he’s pleased to find a road map in the glove box, stashed under the passport and driver’s licence that identify him as Peter R. Deacon, thirty-three. R is for Robert because family’s best use is for cover-ups and crime.

The stamps on Deacon’s passport show he’s only left the country once, four years ago, when he passed through Canada on his way to take a fishing job in Alaska. If asked about his reasons for travelling south, Deacon would say he’s looking forward to living in a warmer climate. It would not be a lie.

He opens the map over the Cruiser’s hood, stands close so that the warmth from the engine dispels the cold. He discards Chicago as his midway spot without pause because even though he’s familiar with it and it is relatively close, he’s had enough wind chill to last him a few lifetimes, and so in his informed opinion, The Windy City can go suck a dick.

Daylight goes quickly these days. It’s morning still, not yet ten am and the sun is pale, the sky bleached of colour as it hangs low above the brown line of the horizon. There’s a lot of driving in the dark ahead, so Peter chooses his route carefully, sticks to the highways and marks the way, reminds himself that he knows how to do this.

He looks for destinations south and west, preferably somewhere the winter hasn’t yet turned into a frozen wasteland. He could lose any tails just by driving through the chaos of Vegas, he supposes, give himself a chance to regroup, get back to the proper order of things. Nobody’s looking for Peter Bishop out west.

 Vegas, then. And then LA, and a plane, and somewhere else.

There is no rush. He can take the long way, wait until he feels like himself again. Peter folds the map back into a portable size, throws it in the back with the dark brown sheriff’s deputy shirt that never held a badge and now probably never will. There’s nothing to be done about the pants, not yet.

Peter drives.

St. Louis unfolds after eight or so hours of driving, a green traffic sign announcing the borders of the city still miles away but he’s closing in at an accelerating rate. The only stops on the road were those made to fill the tank and take a piss and, once, to stock up on Doritos and cream soda for the rest of the drive. He thinks he could keep going, despite the pain in his knees, despite the tingling of his thighs and the itching in his calves, the pulsing ache at the bottom of his spine. He could just drive through, sleep in the backseat when he can’t keep his eyes on the road anymore. He’s done it before.

He could just drive through but he doesn't, because he’s tired, punch drunk. The anger and the adrenaline have burnt out of him in the miles between then and now, by eight hours of trying not to think about Lakeside and what he left in it, trying not to think about the stinging shame of the words he said.

Instead, he stops at the first Motel 6 on the outskirts of the city and he gets a room he pays for in cash for a single night. He makes sure to close the door as he enters, barely has the energy to toe off his boots, slide out of his jacket and kick out of his pants before crawling onto the mattress, all but dropping on it face down.

Growing a conscience may have been a mistake.

 

***

 

Nick's improved mood doesn't survive clean up duty without harm. He's better than he was, but there's no miracle cure for depression, no miracle cure for self-loathing. It's a constant struggle, like a cancer that keeps coming back. The difference is, unlike a cancer, this is not something that can be cut out.

It doesn’t really help that clean up duty consists of mopping up the puddles of Lincoln’s blood from the kitchen floor, and scraping the wax coating on the hardwood with fistfuls of steel wool to remove the stains it left. There’s hadn’t been time for much outside of changing Nick’s clothes to something more weather-appropriate before hurrying to the hospital, and it had not really crossed Olivia’s mind that it would be kinder to take him somewhere else and clean the mess by herself, out of his sight. So she joined him. How could she leave him to fold the darkness back inside, all on his own?

“I fixed the guest room for you, when you’re done,” Nick says from the corner of the living room, where the fireplace glows a deep vermillion as the wood starts to burn. “It’s pretty late.”

Not many people would be able to hear the slight change in the cadence of his words and recognize the anxiety it carries, the nerves the words announce, but Olivia has always been one of the people that can. She turns from the grilled cheese sandwiches cooking on the pan to look at him sitting awkwardly on the arm of the couch, waiting for her to be done or be gone or say something.

“Good,” She tells him, though she’s sure he can see the trepidation in the statement through the flash of her smile. “That means you won’t have to do it over, later.”

“Do you really want to do this?” Nick asks. “Live with me?”

Olivia sighs and takes the sandwiches off the pan, cuts them in half. She doesn’t answer until she’s set the food down on the coffee table, until she’s sat by his side, caught the worried lines of his forehead, the slight tremble at the edge of his mouth. She says, “No,” because she can’t lie, not to him, and not to make him feel better. He’d hate it. “And it’s not because of you, but I don’t see another option.”

Nick nods his head, and bites his lip, and looks away. “I don’t think we have any. This all feels…”

“Inevitable.”

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath.

Olivia swallows hard. “Has it always been like this, for you?”

“You mean because I remember?” Nick lets himself slide into the cushions proper, leans back until his body sinks into the upholstery. He looks at her, briefly, before his eyes return to the crackling of the flames. “I didn’t, after a while in St. Jude’s. And for a while when I was outside of it, too. Inside, the doctors never failed to remind me that the things I thought were real were just delusions, my own paranoia distorting my memories, my thoughts, "turning childhood games into forged realities I could never let go of." And everyone else was just as crazy as I was, just as miserable. Fitting in was easy, I could just fade into the background. And then I was out, and I was here, and you never gave any indication of remembering anything, so I guess…part of me just believed I’d really imagined all of it.”

“And now?” She almost doesn’t want to ask.

“What was written will come to pass.” He says it in a voice that speaks to Olivia of something solid, something immutable and certain. A premonition. Perhaps remembering she won’t understand, he explains, “They used to tell us that, all the time. Fate, I guess. It’s all I can think about.”

Fate. One more thing she can’t control. One more thing she can’t change. Somebody please give her compliments to their puppeteers—they’ve done a thorough job, threading their strings. “I feel like a freak.”

Nick chuckles, grabs a grilled cheese. “Welcome to the club. You won’t enjoy your stay.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” But then, what does her enjoyment have to do with it? War is war is war. It doesn’t ask for anything more than her life.

 

***

 

Later, after the fire has died down and they wait, wide awake, for morning to rear its head, Nick speaks. He asks, “Do you think he'll come back?”

“Hmm?”

“Peter.” _Of course._

“I don't know.” She’s almost surprised at the way the words slice at her, pain her. It doesn’t seem right, that someone so scrupulously engineered would be capable of feeling anything.

“Do you want him to?”

“Yes. But I don't always get what I want.”

 

***

 

The light streaming in through the dirty motel windows hits him in the face, all reddish gold and gooey, the dirt on every surface glittering and waving in the whorls of hot air from the radiator, like bubbles in agave syrup.

The short, angry bursts of a jackhammer breaking pavement filter in through the closed door and interrupt the deep, dreamless void of his sleep. Peter rolls over slowly, groaning at the light, at the hunger rearing its head with a burn at the bottom of his sternum, the kind that announces he’s been running on empty for an hour too long. Or sixteen.

He sits up, dressed in his socks, boxers and long sleeved Henley and rubs the sleep from his eyes, elbows on knees. There are memories of nights like the previous one, followed by mornings like this in multitudes, recorded in the back of his mind in sepia ink that bleeds to the edges, blurring the letters until each line looks like the one before it. A dirty room in a roadside motel, with only his own skin to take care of, both a tool and a burden to bear.

Here, there are no shuffling steps, no banging cabinets and pots, no smell of brewing coffee in the morning; no warm body on the other side of the bed. He’s done this before, and he’ll do it again.

Awake, he stands and he stretches and strips, jumps into the shower. In the shower, he closes his eyes and leans his forehead on the cool tiles and he lets the pressure of the water beat the stiffness off his spine and his thighs and his calves. He washes his hair, the beard and himself and ends the scalding shower by turning the handle, first to ice cold water and then the second before the shock makes him shiver, off all the way.

He dresses in yesterday’s clothes and checks that he’s left nothing behind before he drives himself to clean clothes and some food. At the first department store he finds—a JC Penney maybe, he didn’t really check before he parked—he grabs blessedly clean underwear, a nondescript pair of jeans, and a dirt-gray Cardinal's shirt, because sports shirts are normal and common and it’s the local team; nobody will look twice at him. It's a strategy Peter has learnt from immigrants everywhere: sportswear has a mimetic effect.

He changes in the restroom of the McDonald's at the end of the block but forgoes the worm-patties and the frozen fries for a decent breakfast at Truman's 24 hour diner, ten minutes away by car, thanks to inner-city speed limits. Probably closer on foot. Peter’s never eaten there, has never been in this particular city before, but wandering has taught him that local cuisine is invariably the way to go and it caught his eye as he drove by, so why the hell not?

Truman’s boasts a decent cup of espresso and a full breakfast delivered to order in no time; well-cooked eggs and golden hash-browns and crispy bacon, and Peter feels more human with every bite. The lack of urgency in everything is a nice respite, so unexpected that after finishing half the plate with a few breathless shovels of his fork, he has to remind himself that he’s not needed anywhere, that he can take his time.

It’s easy to slide back into his old skin. The lack of satisfaction in it, a hollow ache that even now carves a place for itself between bones and ligaments and veins, cannot change that.

 

***

 

“Oh, good. You’re here.” He says it like the patrol car on the sidewalk, and Nick inside it, escaped his notice as he climbed the steps and opened the front door without knocking. She hasn’t had the time to change the locks in the last month.

“What do you want, John?” Olivia doesn’t stop packing her bags, doesn’t spare him a glance. Because it would hurt, she knows, to look at him right now, standing in the doorway of the room they shared, leaning on the jamb, like he’d always done on the few occasions he’d surprised her by coming home without notice.

“I heard you're moving in with Lane after the incident,” John says, his tone conspiratorial, like they’re sharing office gossip before heading to bed. Once again, like nothing has changed.

Heard it from Sam, no doubt. “Did you?”

“It’s not really why I’m here.”

“No?” Olivia turns, raises her eyebrows, laces the words with as much sarcasm as she feels capable of. “Who would have thought?”

John snorts, throws a pale yellow folder on the bed and crosses his arms. “Turns out Massive Dynamic doesn’t give up. But I told you that.”

“And I said no, and that is still the answer you’re going to get, so you might as well keep the papers and go tell your bosses to stop trying.” She takes the contract pushes it over onto the other end of the mattress without even glancing at what it says, away from the pile of clothes she’s been systematically rolling and shoving into her bag. She doesn’t need much, but she also doesn’t know how long this cohabitation will last. Better to be prepared for anything than to be caught off guard.

“Not going to happen,” John says, and she can feel the smirk in his voice, knows it’s there to taunt her. He knows which buttons to push. Or he knew. “They’ve made up their minds and even if it’s hard to believe, they can outlast you. It doesn’t really matter what I say.”

“The answer is no, John,” she reiterates as neutrally as she is able, refusing to react. She’s a grown up, goddammit, she can avoid his middle-school tactics. “Like it has been the last five times you tried. It’s final.”

“I thought so.” He puts his hands in his pockets, makes his car keys jingle. “It's a good idea, for what it's worth, living with Lane. He’s not exactly stable.”

Olivia can’t help it. She laughs.

“What?” John asks.

After she’s stopped laughing, she wipes the corners of her eyes, turns back to folding. “It figures that you'd be the only person not trying to change my mind about it.”

He chuckles in answer. “Like that would work.” He backs away from the bedroom door. “You should consider the possibility that I know you better than you think I do.”

“Goodbye, John.”

From the hallway he tries once more; “Get back at me on the business proposal, will you? I think you’ll be reconsidering your answer pretty soon.”

“Goodbye, John.”

The front door clicks shut.

A few minutes pass where Olivia does nothing but stare at the space he left in the doorway, before she shakes herself and turns to the innocuous little folder that’s about as threatening as a live bomb. Massive Dynamic has not changed its tune, but it now offers what the company board probably thinks is a measure of privacy good enough for her to agree: no tapes, no records, no test results sent to them, only John’s presence in the room during the tests and the experiments, in exchange for full monetary support.

Olivia chuckles, runs a hand through her hair, doesn’t know how to react to any of this anymore. How does one handle a complete lack of control? She should have answered differently; should have said _fuck, no._ Someone probably forgot to explain the current situation to the members of the board.

Then, a knock on the door, and Charlie Francis outside the door.

“Astrid mentioned you were picking stuff up,” he explains, when she’s pulls the door open far enough that her face shows.

“Ah.” She steps aside. Trust Astrid to step in for Lincoln in keeping everyone informed of absolutely everything, in all places, at all times.

“Backstabbing Ex Husband giving you any trouble?” Charlie asks, stepping inside. “Saw him leaving on the way up.”

“He tried,” Olivia says. “In the form of yet another contract revision from Massive Dynamic. I didn’t let him.”

“Atta girl.” Charlie smiles. “He is going to keep trying, you know? They pay him to.”

“I am aware.” She huffs, annoyed at the small talk, annoyed at the mess of conflicting emotions the words still offset. “Okay, what is it?”

Charlie, even after knowing her all these years, still attempts to look innocent and holds his hands up. “What is what?”

“What you came all the way out here to tell me, when you could have called and when I know for a fact that there’s a pile of paperwork on your desk that needed doing yesterday.” She puts her hands on her hips, and stares him down.

Charlie sighs, one of his deep I-hate-this-part-of-my-job-and-I-hate-you-for-making-it-harder sighs. “This thing you’re planning on doing? It is deeply irresponsible.”

She lets her shoulders drop. “Oh, not you too.”

Charlie matches her stance, grabs his belt with both hands. “Why, did Bishop by any chance tell you how stupid this is?”

“Loudly, and for the fiftieth time.” She rolls her eyes. Will no one stop mentioning him? “How did you know it was him?”

“It's called deductive reasoning, you should read about it some time."

“You really think you're funny, don't you?” She glares at him for emphasis.

“I’m hilarious. You really want to know?” He doesn’t really wait for her response before he tells her, counting every reason on fingers that he holds up for her to see. “He follows you around like an imprinted duckling, he’s smart, he is actually insane enough to tell you."

“More like irritating and exhausting.” And gone. But she has more important things to deal with than that particular sliver of hurt.

“All of those, then.” He holds up a conciliatory hand. “Look, I’m not saying he’s right, and I’m not saying Nick did this on purpose; we’ve all seen how he and Lincoln are. But the truth here is that he can’t control it, and being near him is only putting you in harm’s way. And if something happens to you, who’s going to be thoughtful enough to bring me coffee in the morning?”

His attempt at dismissing his concern for her doesn’t really deserve the smile she gives him, but it escapes from her grasp. Her answer to that concern, however, is dead serious, an argument she’s tired of making. “But that’s exactly why I need to do this, Charlie,” she says. “What if I can help him control it? What if we can use it to save lives, to defend ourselves from these things that we don't understand? What if it's the thing that is going to save us all?” Then, softer, “Charlie, what if it happens to me? What if I hurt one of you, and we still don't know how it works because we were so afraid of all the things that could wrong that we didn't even try it?”

“That is an alarming number of big fucking ‘ifs’, Liv,” Charlie points out, eyebrows raised, but he doesn’t contradict anything of what she’s said.

“I know.”

He sighs again. “There's nothing I can say that's gonna change your mind, right?”

“Right.” Olivia lets her hands drop.

Charlie nods, and shrugs, and points to the bags in the living room. “So, are all of these yours?”

 

***

 

It’s noon by the time he makes it out of St. Louis and onto the freeway, not heading straight south any longer, but west. He settles into the seat on the Vista Cruiser and picks a jazz station, turns the volume up. His cellphone, which he has only recently remembered in a newbie slip that’s still giving him grief, lies disassembled on the passenger seat, battery thrown somewhere on the floor for good measure.

It was the 24 missed calls from Mabel’s that reminded him, and now he can’t get the phone out of his mind.

The traffic, hellish in the outskirts of the city, grows more sparse the farther away he gets and the road goes on before him, unknown. He’s still firmly embedded in the midwest, and there are snowed-in fields on both sides of the eight lanes that make up the I-70. It’s nothing resembling the dryness of the desert he seeks, but he’ll be there in a day of solid driving if he keeps going like this—which means he should aim to be there in about three days, minimum.

He’s an hour past Kansas City when the sun dips down past the horizon, turns the sky a splatter of colours on acid in the half hour before the light goes out. The parking lights of an old Hyundai by the side of the road catch his eye as he approaches and he slows down. Briefly, he considers passing by at the sight of the woman on the phone, shivering, but the young boy sitting on the roof with the lunchbox on his lap gives him pause. (They did something to his brain back in Lakeside, he’s pretty certain, scrambled all the signals that used to tell him to look away and move on).

Peter pulls over about twenty feet from the Hyundai, pulls on his hat before stepping out. He waves at the woman, who says something quick and low on the phone and hangs up by the time he’s stepped close enough not to shout. “Car trouble?”

“Yeah, it broke down about an hour ago,” the woman explains, looking both relieved and ashamed, with a shade of road trip suspicion thrown in that makes Peter put on his friendliest face. “Thank you for stopping. The nearest tow truck is about three hours away.”

“Don’t mention it. Do you know what the problem is?”

“No, I checked under the hood but nothing looked wrong.” The woman shrugs. “I used to be able to fix small things, but my…somebody else usually did it for me. I forgot.”

There’s a story there. _And don’t you dare ask, Bishop, just do your thing and go away._

“Mind if I take a look?” Peter asks.

“Go ahead, maybe you’ll spot it. Here.” She hands him a headlamp moulded in the shape of a cartoon alligator’s head, bright green even in the failing light marking the time to be a little past five in the afternoon. It is a tight fit on his head, and it will probably give him a headache but it is useful. The kid is probably going through his explorer’s phase.

“Thanks.”

“I’m Helen, by the way.” She holds out a hand that’s bony and thin as a reed, like the rest of her. She nods her head in the direction of the boy on the roof of the car, who looks owlishly at the both of them. He doesn’t smile, but doesn’t look sad. “And this is Max.”

“Peter.” He shakes her hand, waves at the kid. The boy clutches his lunchbox tightly with one hand and waves back with the other, a little half-hearted raise of his arm.

Peter opens the hood, gets to work. He shoves the sleeves of his jacket and shirt as high up his arms as he can and does a cursory check. Finding nothing he proceeds to dig his hands into the bowels of the car, feeling for leaks or loose parts.

After a few minutes of moving everything this way and that, he says, “Well, Helen, are you in a hurry?” He cleans greasy hands on what were his clean, new pants and looks at her.

“Not exactly,” Helen says. “Why?”

“Your radiator’s pretty much shot.” Peter explains. “It’s not leaking and it’s a bit rusty but it’s not rusted through, and the seams don’t look worn out so it’s probably the fan that’s malfunctioning, something in the ignition wires. I can make a quick fix but it’s only going to work for a couple hours at most, before it starts overheating again. That’ll take you to the next town over, but if that’s not where you’re going, you’re gonna need to stop for a couple days and have someone in a shop take a proper look, or change cars.”

“If it’s a quicker fix than waiting for the tow truck to get here, then go crazy with it.” She looks at her boy, says, “I should get him off the road before it really gets cold.”

“Sure,” he says. “It won’t take more than a half hour, at most.”

“Okay.”

At some point, as he’s fiddling with cables and trying to avoid electrocution as his cause of death, he feels something small brush his side curiously. “Hey, bud.”

Max, lunchbox attached, says, “Mommy said you’re fixing the car.”

“Yup. Wanna take a look? It’s kind of boring.”

The boy nods his head, so Peter moves aside and points to the different parts in the car, the wires he’s fixing. Tries to explain everything in terms an eight year old might understand. Max holds himself up on tiptoes by the metal edge left by the absence of the hood on the front of the car, and looks at each part as Peter points to it, his face in rapt attention. He props the lunchbox against that same edge, always being sure to keep it close to himself.

Absently, and perhaps catching some of the boys curiosity, Peter asks, “You got something important in there?”

The boy nods and turns serious, an old man expression in his little face, all scrunched up and intent. “My daddy,” Max says, little heels falling back to the ground, little arms hugging the lunchbox containing what Peter now surmises are most likely his father’s ashes, all the tighter. And oh, fucking hell. “Mommy said I had to take care of him. She said I couldn’t let him out of my sight, so I don’t. I know he’s not coming back, but think maybe he feels less alone in my lunchbox, because he got it for me and he knows I like it a lot.”

This is why it’s always better to shut up and not ask. Swallowing hard, Peter ruffles the boys hair, says, “I’m sure he does, Max. Go tell your mom I’m almost done, will you?”

The boy does as he’s told. It gives Peter time to finish up and work on getting away from this mess as fast as he can.

“I’m sorry about that,” Helen says, coming back. The boy must have told her something, the way kids do.

“No, it’s…I asked. How’d he die?” Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

“Leukaemia. About a week ago. He went pretty fast.” Her words come quiet, nearly drowned out by the sound of traffic as it passes by, but Peter’s paying attention. He hears every word. “I’m not really sure Max understands any of it. I don’t know if he can tell that I’m sad all the time, and I’m…I’m not sure how to explain to him that it’s not his fault.”

Maybe he overdid it with the friendly face. He has to admit he’s a little rusty after the unintended hiatus he’s only now coming out of. Maybe something his expression told this poor, desperate woman to please, please tell him her life story. It’s his own fault, really.

“Children always know,” Peter says. He really can’t fucking help himself, can he? “I think the best you can do is explain to him why you’re sad, even if you think he doesn’t get it. And don’t compare him to his dad when he grows up. Treat him like his own person.”

Helen regards him for a moment, asks, “Are you a dad?”

Peter chuckles. “No. I don’t think I’d be dad material in a million years.” He motions with his chin in the direction of the kid. “But I’ve been him, more or less.”

“Your mother raised you, you mean.”

“Yeah, she tried.”

“Well, Peter, she did a good job.” She pats his arm. “Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome.” He pushes the hood closed and yanks his sleeves back down past his wrists. “Have a safe trip.”

Peter waits until their tail lights grow dim in the distance and then disappear before he gets back in the car, starts the engine, pulls the hat off. Then he leans his head against the steering wheel and thinks, very clearly, _you fucking moron._

 He should have moved on. Now, he can’t help but think of Max clutching the lunchbox that held what was left of his dad, so, so fiercely protective. Like the man was more than ashes and memories. And he can’t help but think of Walter alone, in his bathrobe and slippers and with sad, sad, watery blue eyes that looked for him everywhere what would happen when they couldn’t find anything. Can’t help but think of the stooped spine and the shaking hands that like to check his breathing at night, have shaken him from sleep more than once, the loose flesh of them always cool.

And the thought makes him want to cry like his nine year old self that only wanted his father to smile at him for trying to cook breakfast for dinner on a Christmas evening. Except his father didn't get home that night, or the next, or the one after that, and so his mother sat at the table and piled the pancakes high, ate them all with a smile. The smile reached her eyes. Even as a boy he’d known how hard that was.

What would she think, if she were here, if she saw him like this? Maybe, Peter thinks, maybe it’s good that she isn’t. Her disappointment would kill him.

He cares, and it is terrifying. He cares, and it is pathetic and excruciating and what the hell is he doing even bothering to pretend he can stay away? Pretend this is something other than a tantrum, pretend he’s still the same aimless man who could up and leave and not think of the things left behind.

“Goddammit.” Peter takes the next legal U-turn on the highway, and he heads back home.

 

***

 

“Is that what you always feel like?” Olivia hears Lincoln ask from her seat on the bench outside of his hospital room. His voice is soft, anguished.

“Not always.” Nick says, his smile sad as he leans into the hand Lincoln has placed on his face. Olivia turns away from the doorway, tries to give them privacy, but their voices still reach her as do the emotions in them. They’ve finally gotten Lincoln to a low enough dosage of sedatives that he can stay awake through a full conversation and so their visit today has been fruitful.

“I’m sorry,” Lincoln says. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“What on earth for?”

“I should have noticed,” Lincoln explains. “I should have noticed you weren’t okay when you said you were.”

Nick waits a while before answering. If she knows him as well as she thinks she does, he’s screwing up the courage to let himself be vulnerable, show a less than stellar face to the man he cares the most about. “It happens,” He says, finally. “I got good at hiding it a long time before we met, so…stop worrying about it?”

“Are you…better now?”

“Yes. You’re okay.”

“I’m _great_.”

Nick laughs. “Right.”

“Promise me something,” Lincoln starts.

“Anything, babe,” Nick says, earnest. “Anything.”

“If you feel like this again…when you feel like this again, will you tell me? Will you let me help you?”

She hears Nick give a sharp intake of breath. “No. Not that.” She can imagine him shaking his head.

Lincoln sighs. “You said anything.”

“Linc…you don’t want— _I_ don’t want you to see me like that.”

“Like what?” He repeats his question. “Like what, Nick?”

“Weak.”

“I can’t see something that has never been there. Nick, look at me. I love you. You are not weak. There is not a single weak bone in you, not even a whisper of it. And if you think feeling like you do… if you think suffering is weakness then I love you for it. Look at me. I _love you_ for it. Don’t leave me.”

Looking in, Olivia sees Nick bent over the hand in his grasp, tears bright at the corners of his eyes. “I won’t,” he says. “I love you. I won’t. I’m gonna get you out of here soon.”

God, she envies them. What kind of person does that make her?

 

***

 

Peter gets back to Lakeside a full forty-eight hours after crossing the county line in his retreat. His first stop, for lack of ideas and with no short amount of general masochism, is the Sheriff’s Department. And the Sheriff’s Department is desolate, doors closed, pale sun shining on the frozen windows. The only car in the parking lot is Astrid’s.

Great. That’s great. Maybe she’ll shoot him before anyone else can make him feel like the absolute idiot he knows he is. Astrid can be merciful that way. He parks, takes a deep breath, and gets out of the car. Climbs the steps into the building. He stomps the snow and dirt off his boots and pushes through the door. His steps echo in the room; the only other sounds are the cars on the street and the voice of the host on NPR from the station’s radio.

From the kitchenette, “You’re late.”

Peter turns to find Astrid glaring at him from the counter, where a few brown boxes rest in wait of labelling before their contents hit the fridge. The anger in her generally benign features makes Peter stop cold. He’s never seen her angry before. Exasperated, sure, but not angry, not like this. Carefully he says, “It’s my day off.”

“You didn’t come in yesterday,” Astrid points out. “You’re late.”

“Take it off my paycheque, then.” Peter sighs. “Are you going to tell me where everyone is or do I have to beg?”

“I’m thinking about it.” She pauses, but he can tell there’s more she wants to say so he waits. Then, “That was some first-class asshole maneuver you pulled there, Peter Bishop.”

“Yeah.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I know.”

Astrid crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you even sorry for it?”

“Do you think I'd be here if I wasn’t?”

After a while of staring at him, and making him feel like she might be getting ready to chop him to bits, Astrid drops the anger, says, “They're at Nick's. Walter-proofing the house, moving in. There was talk of Christmas decorations.”

“You're an angel,” he says, saccharine.

“And you don't deserve me.” Astrid rolls her eyes. “Now get that pretty butt over there.”

Peter grins. “Does Frank know you love my butt?”

“Go away, Peter.”

He does.

Peter runs down the steps, gets back in the Vista Cruiser, and then, because he is a coward as well as an idiot, he takes the long way around to the cabin. He stops by Henning’s Farm and Home Supplies and buys himself the first air mattress on the rack, then stops at the gas station to fill the tank and at Chatzi’s for a platter of pork souvlaki, with its little lemons and fluffy rice. He stops at his apartment to pack most of the clothes he’s acquired in the last eight months, his toothbrush, shampoo and deodorant, and whatever other toiletries he can stuff into his duffel bag. When he finally runs out of stops, he sits in the car and listens to the static that’s left of the radio station he’d been listening to since somewhere past Madison but can’t be bothered to change it or turn the radio off altogether.

Then he drives.

The cabin is a 30 minute drive from the apartment, but Peter stretches it as much as he can, drives under the speed limit the whole time. Eventually though, he gets there and has run out of distractions, run out of excuses.

Charlie’s truck ends up covering the Oldsmobile from the line of sight of anyone in the house as he parks. He slings the duffel bag over his shoulder, grabs the air mattress still in its box, and walks up the gravel path to the cabin, unnoticed. The only reason his hands are not sweating is because he forgot to put on gloves—hates driving with them—and the moisture on his skin has frozen in the cold.

The door to the cabin is open, so he keeps going until he steps inside. Second thoughts will only make this worse.

Inside the house, because he’s never had any luck, is Olivia, momentarily alone. She is rearranging the furniture into something of a den in front of the fireplace, moving things back and forth. Charlie is a distant shape in the snow-covered yard, talking on the phone, looking out to the fence and the sparse forest beyond it. Peter drops everything and takes a deep breath. It doesn’t take long for her to notice him, standing in the doorway like a fool, staring in.

He takes his jacket off, looks at her look at him and then at the bag and box at his feet. The words tumble out without even a greeting from his part. He says, “I’m not letting Walter anywhere near any of you without me here.” He raises his hands before she has time to formulate a protest, let alone speak it. “And no, before you bite my head off, I do not mean you can’t handle him, we can all agree that you’d flatten a tornado if you put your mind to it. I mean you should have back up when you inevitably have to handle him, and I am, sadly and to the universe's infinite amusement, the one person he's guaranteed to listen to.”

Olivia looks him in the eye but points at his chest, at the t-shirt on it. And all that comes out of her mouth is, “How was St. Louis?”

“Depressingly warmer,” he says. Holds her look. When nothing else happens, nothing else is said, Peter frowns, bites the inside of his cheek. _That’s it?_

“Hey!” Nick claps him on the back, walking in with a metal thermos in the crook of his arm, looking like he drank one coffee cup too many with breakfast. “One more! Shit, I’m not sure the living room’s big enough.” Then, holding out the thermos, “Peppermint tea?”

 

***

 

“He's chipper.”

The comment is about Nick but Olivia can feel him looking at her as he says it. If she returns his stare, her face might do something she'll regret later, like _grin_ , and she doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she's happy to see him. “He's panicking.”

Peter says her name. He says, “Olivia,” lazy on the “o,” dragging on the “l,” like he always does, and there is something in his voice that keeps her planted, makes her turn. She wants him to say it again, she realizes. Wants to see his face when he does.

He steps close enough that she can smell the cheap motel soap and shampoo that lingers from his trip, smoke from burning wood on wet snow that must have come from somewhere in the outskirts of the town, and the hours in the car over the wild riverbank scent that belongs only to him. He tells her, “I’m sorry. For what I said,” contrite, with effort.

His hand slides up the bare skin of her arm, fingers running briefly over the crook of her elbow, the pads cool and soft. Most of the scars on his hands are on the backs, cuts and scrapes and burns the body of evidence of his skills, his life, his lies; some so old that time has made them smooth as the skin on his palms. His scars are all visible in moonlight, infrequent once she’s past his elbows and, until recently, null on his midsection. They pick up at his knees but remain scant. He has never used a gun with regularity, though he seems familiar enough with aiming and firing. He has used his fists. These are the things she knows of him.

This she believes: those hands will never touch her to harm.

“I know.” She smiles for his benefit, quickly, not very wide. She points to the coffee table blocking the foldout section of the couch, says, “Help me with that.”

Politely, he lets himself be distracted. “Sure.”

Sometimes, Olivia can’t help but think, she gets exactly what she wants. It is not always a good thing; now she has to face this, whatever _this_ is.

 

***

 

After Olivia’s dismissal of his apology Peter is left with something identifiable only as job-gone-bad anxiety, a pressure in his chest he generally associates with angry Iraqi contractors pointing Kalashnikovs at fairly necessary parts of his anatomy, like his head, or his stomach, or his liver.

 He is expecting her to fix him with one of those withering looks and say something scathing, maybe even pull away from the hand that takes on a life of its own and decides it needs to touch her. So when none of that happens and instead she smiles, Peter decides that the best thing to do is just freeze all mental processes and let her shove him around the room as personal muscle, without so much as a word other than “help me with that.”

(She smiled at him, is all he can think of, and that just doesn’t happen on a normal day without the intervention of a sizeable dose of sarcasm and/or idiocy on his part, and it is always an accomplishment he feels he should at least get a pat on the head for achieving. It hasn’t really happened since those few agonizing hours after he was shot. And _those_ smiles could easily just have been a fever induced hallucination, because she was getting divorced in the next room, and aside from the drugs the only other explanation for smiling was that she was glad he’d almost died, which he would almost believe, but then she was the one that made sure he didn’t bleed out in the snow, and she was the one who all but commanded that he keep on breathing, and _oh, god, what is going on?_ )

It is a relief when Nick asks for a hand in taking out all the boxes of Christmas shit from the attic but the relief doesn’t last. As the other man stares at the labels on the boxes, looking for the ones that need to be brought down, Peter thinks that if he’s going to really apologize, he needs to ask forgiveness from all parties on the receiving end of the hurts he caused. Which is a thought so revolutionary in the confines of his mind that it makes him blanch.

He’s not backing down from it, regardless, so as Nick grabs the first of the boxes and starts motioning to the others in the same pile, Peter steps into the cone of light from the single lamp hung across the main beam of the roof. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he slides them into his pockets and says, not very eloquently, “Look, I know you heard what I said, at the station and I’m sorry. It was…thoughtless of me.”

Nick smiles, shakes his head. “I’ve heard much worse,” he says. “And you were scared, it happens. If I were you I wouldn’t trust me with Olive’s safety either.”

The words chill him, make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “She can handle herself.”

“Yeah.” The other man nods. “She can take me. But that doesn’t make you any less afraid for her, does it?”

“Not really.”

“Good. She’s doesn’t listen, and she’s too reckless. She’s going to need someone looking out for her, before the end.” In the half-light Nick seems a ghost, cheeks drawn, hair a mess, the scar swooping down over the side of his face like a long, snaking warning of danger, of doom. His pronouncement is unambiguous. His eyes, obscured by the angle of the light and the shadows of his brow, remain black unknowns on either side of his nose.

Peter shivers. “The end of what?”

“Everything.” Nick turns to the attic’s door, but before Peter can say anything else, he turns back and grins a grin with sharp edges and devoid of humour. He says, “I like you, but Peter? You’re still an asshole.”

 This apologizing thing is harder than he thought it would be.

 

***

 

Dinner is pizza brought over by a delivery girl that looks them over and pronounces them _fuckin’ weirdos_ , under her breath. She has arrived at this judgment in the space of the minute it takes for Astrid, who arrived with Frank and Walter not long after Charlie left, to collect the money for the four large pizzas in the thermal bag on the ground.

Payment given, Delivery Girl, whom Olivia is pretty sure is either Carol or Barbara, one of the older of Kate Bailey’s children, jumps down the single step at the entrance. She clicks open the ancient reddish-brown corolla she looks barely old enough to be driving and heads away from the property. Astrid pushes the door shut with her wool-covered toes.

 

***

 

This is going to be awkward. That thought dominates as Astrid and Frank leave, Nick climbs the stairs to his room, and Olivia escapes, first into the bathroom and then behind the firmly locked door of her room. He didn’t check it, but he heard the lock click shut.

Then again, nothing can be more awkward than an ex-conman in his thirties living with his clinically insane father while working for the sheriff’s department of the World’s Creepiest Town, so Peter is more or less certain that he’s adequately equipped to deal with the avoidance and the heavy silences as they come. It’s just going to be frustrating as all fuck.

“Peter?” Speak of the devil.

Peter spits in the sink and turns on the faucet, rinsing out his mouth before he speaks. “Walter.”

“You came back,” Walter says, standing at the door, still in his knit sweater and corduroy pants and woollen socks.

Peter thinks _, I may not like the man you are, but I can’t abandon you._ Says, “Good to know you can still point out the obvious.” Shakes his head. “Yes, I’m back. And before you get any ideas, I want to be very clear.” He turns from the sink, zeroes in on his father. “My being here does not mean that I suddenly think there’s something remotely okay about what you’re doing, or planning on doing, to these people. Because I don’t. I think it is irresponsible and insane. And I don’t even know if you see them as people, but Walter, I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure your ego doesn’t kill them.”

“Son…the boy, I-I did not think it would evolve this fast.” He stutters, shuffling his feet as he attempts to explain. “As-as children, it took them years to acclimate, to start developing their gifts—”

Peter interrupts, says, voice hard, “His name is Nick, Walter, and they’re not gifts.”

“W-what?”

“What you did to them was cruel and inhumane and horrifying. And the sooner you wrap your head around that, the better it’ll go for all of us. The things they can do because of your experiments may be useful, they may even save all our lives at some point, but they aren’t gifts.” He stabs at Walter’s chest with a finger. “You ruined lives. You destroyed them. And you’re planning to do it again.”

“It is not my intention to hurt them,” Walter says, hands fiddling with the hem of his sweater.

“And your intentions mean nothing, if they end up hurt, or dead, or worse.”

“They have to mean something.” One of Walter’s hands makes its way to Peter’s cheek, trembles over his skin. Pulling back would be his natural reflex, but the look on his father’s face keeps him from moving away. “If they don’t, son, then there is no hope for any of us.”

Peter turns away, rinses his toothbrush. “Don’t kill them, and you won’t have to find out.” He dries his hands on the towel and brushes past Walter on his way out of the room.

“Son?” Walter calls, the light from the bathroom haloing the shape of his bent shoulders. It obscures his expression. “I’ll need your help. Sometimes, I—I don’t know myself. What I’m capable of doing.”

Peter nods. “I’ll keep you in check, Walter, but I hope you remember this when you do something that hurts them. You may not like what I do, then.”

“You’re a good man, Peter.”

“No, I’m not. But maybe I can still be a decent one.”

 

***

 

Somehow, after the pizza is done, and the people not staying are gone; after Nick has retired to the bedroom upstairs, where he will lie alone in a bed meant to be shared; after Peter has grumbled and puffed and made his bed on the air mattress by the foot of the couch, and Walter has ingested whatever cocktail of drugs it is that will carry him dreamlessly through the night on that same couch, Olivia sleeps.

She doesn’t mean to. At first, she lies there in the guest room, on a mattress that is neither too soft nor too hard, on a pillow that smells of dust even under the pillowcase and the linen-scented detergent it was recently washed with, and she stares at the bare wood on the ceiling.

Then the thoughts in her head grow muddled, too heavy to carry. She drops them, just for a second, enough to rest her eyes for a short stretch. Not to sleep, she thinks. With no sleep, she won’t dream. With no dreaming she won’t scream herself awake, thereby waking everyone else who can now hear the screaming along with her.

Convinced of this, she closes her eyes. Just for a second. Not to sleep, she repeats.

Then darkness.

 

***

 

Of course Walter would love the fucking cows. Of course.

No sooner had they parked at the main house on the Richardson farm and debriefed with old Ben, had Walter proceeded to disregard the lecture on proper, civilized human behaviour and trekked through the snow to the nearest quadruped with udders and black spots on fur.

At the top of the small hill overlooking the pasture closest to the house, Peter cradles the thermos full of Lakeside’s Darkest Coffee Brew, trademarked to one sleepless and very pissed off Nick Lane three hours ago, and takes a sip that tastes like liquid fire but can’t burn his tongue anymore. It’s not his first sip, and there are no taste buds left to be burnt.

He passes the thermos to the other freezing body sitting on the hood of the car, says, “I’d like to remind you that you thought it was a good idea to let my father near cows. Just for the record.”

Olivia grabs the proffered thermos, takes a gulp from it so large that Peter is tempted to consider offering up a handful of snow for her to suck on, to relieve the burn. “Noted,” she says, grimacing at the bitter taste. “But, Astrid needed a break. She’s been baking nonstop for the past month. You should see the station’s fridge.”

“I _have_ seen it, and I am thankful for its contents.” Peter’s stomach growls at the thought. “I really don’t see how Astrid baking is a problem. In fact, I might just cuff her to Walter and throw away the key. You know, for science.”

“She only bakes in batches when the stress starts to get to her.”

“So? Have you tasted those pies?”

Olivia gives him a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, Peter, I have tasted the pies. Have you seen Astrid lose it?”

“I don’t think that’s actually possible,” he says, believes it wholeheartedly. If there is even a chance that anyone will remain sane by the end of the psychological thriller Walter’s got planned for the lot of them, he’ll bet on Astrid and the halo of bouncing curls on her head.

“Point.” She shrugs. “Anyway, we needed someone who could draw their blood.”

It’s disorienting, how calm she’s being about his leaving, how nonchalant she’s been about him coming back. And he understands that he probably doesn’t even rank in the ladder of horrible shit Olivia has been dealing with for the past five months of her life, that there are more important things than poor, misunderstood Peter that occupy her time, but some sort of reaction other than complete and utter indifference would be a great sign that she hasn’t been replaced by biomechanical-fucking-assholes from another universe—which, in the world he lives in, is a more than passing concern.

At this point even a screaming match would be nice, but he doesn’t think she does those. Ever. She’s more the silent and deadly type.

Part of him, a part of him perhaps larger than he’s ready to admit, wants for it to have meant something. That his coming back can communicate to her that this is it for him, that he’s invested. That she can count on him to have her back. That he's put on his grown up pants and has decided that he wants to be someone worth her time. Mostly, he wants some sign that will show him the right thing to say, and how to say it, and when.

In the continued absence of it, he chooses to stick with the banter and says, “ _That’s_ why we brought Walter?”

Olivia frowns at him, pale eyebrows making an appearance from underneath the black edge of her toque. “And this surprises you because…”

“Because I could have done that in half an hour, tops.” She gives him the kind of look she wears during interrogations, silently demands he explain. He says, “I took some infirmary courses a while back.”

“When you faked your way through grad school, you mean.” Olivia looks back to Walter sauntering around the field, running his hands over the wide parabolas of cattle spines. The corner of her mouth curls up in a smirk.

“Yeah.” He slides off the hood, bends to grab the toolbox Walter left to freeze by the right wheel on the front of the car. The one with the test tubes and the rubbing alcohol, the cotton balls and gloves, and the full pack of single use needles.

“Well, I don’t think we’ll be able to get Walter away from the cows any time soon, so why don’t you—”

The slap of the blue latex gloves against the skin of his wrists cuts her off. “I am way ahead of you," he tells her. "Genius, remember?”

Olivia huffs and then, like he’s wrenched it out of her, she gives him one of her near-invisible smiles. “Are you ever not entirely full of shit?”

Peter grins. “You don’t pay me enough for that.”

“And if you keep talking, I won’t be paying you at all. Your choice.”

“I just can’t win with you, can I?”

“Nope.” She takes another sip from the thermos, a short one this time. “But it’s sweet that you still try.”

“I’m a sweet guy,” Peter says, moving away from her, towards the farmhands looking at the madman inspecting the cows’ teeth. He can hear her snort from the slope of the hill. “Ladies, gentlemen, if you could line up over on the side of the barn, Dr. Bishopwould like to get a blood sample from you all, just to be sure everyone is healthy. We’ll get out of your hair as soon as we’re done.”

 

***

 

Olivia has been perched on the office couch for the better part of an hour by the time Charlie comes in through the door, coffee cup in hand. He takes one look at her sitting there, with the files that lay on his desk spread before her, and rolls his eyes, grunts in acknowledgement. He lowers himself into his chair, leans back and drinks his coffee slowly. Olivia keeps scanning the files.

When the coffee has had its effect and he’s awake, he says, “Tell me something, how does Bishop cope with your idea of _early_?”

“I don’t really give him a choice,” Olivia deadpans.

Charlie shakes his head. “Poor guy,” he says. “Did you even sleep last night?”

“I did, actually. Got introduced to the Bishop morning routine, too. At 5:30, sharp.”

“That sounds terrifying.”

“It’s worse. I’m pretty sure it should come with nudity and strong language warnings attached.”

Charlie laughs, then gets down to business. “Nothing at the Richardson’s?”

Olivia shakes her head. “We’re still waiting for test results,” she says, “but no one refused to have their blood drawn, so no, I don’t think so.”

“So you’re thinking what?” Charlie asks, swivelling in his chair to face her. “It was a fluke?”

“Not sure yet. Walter is positive the first sample came from a shapeshifter, but we still don’t have any theories about what they might have been after on a dairy farm.”

Charlie makes a face, laces his fingers at the bottom of his sternum, leaning back into the chair. “Expand the search then. We got warrants for most farms in the area, so take Bishop and test everyone working on them in any capacity, as time allows. I’ll take everything else that comes up. Astrid can help, and Lincoln when he gets back.”

Olivia nods and stands. “Thanks, Charlie.”

“Oh, don’t thank me. Your godmother duties just grew to the moon—be prepared for extensive babysitting.”

_“What?_ ” Olivia sits back down.

“What, you thought we were picking someone else?” Charlie raises his eyebrows, smiles at her.

“I thought…I don’t know, we've never even talked about it.” She holds the back of a hand over her mouth and stares at him. Who gave him the right to surprise her with something like this? “I—are you sure?”

Charlie shrugs. “Sonia chose you. Her brother’s the godfather, and my mother’s got enough on her hands with my brothers’ children, so I just nodded in the affirmative and thanked god she chose me for a husband. Like I do most nights. Besides, I figure if you’re somewhere in the picture, the only way anyone would harm my kid would be over your dead body. Which isn’t gonna happen, so there. Everyone wins.”

The magnitude of the offer—and it is an offer; the way he looks at her in search of any sign that she doesn’t want this makes it clear that she could refuse the responsibility-stuns her. That he would still think well of her, after all the things he’s learned of her, after becoming as aware as her of the monstrosities she has been made to be capable of, monstrosities dormant but expected of her, is a vote of confidence she is unsure she would give if their places were reversed.

Taking a shaky breath, Olivia looks at the man, the _friend_ , putting the wellbeing of his child in her hands (hands made for gunpowder and grime, and the sound of flesh beating flesh), and she nods. From her spot on the couch, she tries very hard not to cry.

 

***

 

The Sheriff’s Department has been making an effort to not leave Lincoln alone for long periods of time while visiting hours are on, so as a part of it, unofficial as it may be, Peter swings by to keep the man company before Astrid can come get him checked out. It is his last day inside, and Peter almost itches with the same restlessness he can see Lincoln feels just by looking at him through the glass pane of the door. He’s done enough time in hospitals that just memories of the feeling of being caged within pristine, pale walls makes him tense up.

“Hey, man,” Peter says.

Lincoln turns to him from the bed, scans him up and down and purses his lips. “Hey, asshole.”

“Oh, there we go,” Peter groans. At least his being an asshole is a general consensus. “You’re fine, it’s like nothing happened. Why are you even still in here? Is that it for the insults or do you have anything more to say? Please, I’d love to hear it.”

“I’m not the first to open your eyes to the truth of your gigantic assholeness, am I?” Lincoln raises his eyebrows.

“Nope. Astrid beat you to the punch. And your guy.” Peter takes the chair by the bed, turns it around and rests his upper arms on the back as he sits down. “And Charlie keeps looking at me like he expects me to be missing a limb pretty soon.”

“Nothing from Olivia?”

“Not a word.” Which is, again, disturbing. And it’s feeding the ulcer in the pit of his stomach, the one with Walter’s name on it inscribed in perfect copperplate handwriting, that acts up every time the man so much as breathes in the Wonder Twins’ very blonde vicinity. It’s the thing that is going to kill him, provided Olivia doesn’t snap first.

“I would be very scared.” Lincoln fakes a terrified shudder for effect.

“Why do you think I’m here?” Peter rests his cheek on a fist.

“To visit me?”

“No, Lincoln, because it’s the intensive care unit.” Peter grins. “If she cuts something off, it’ll be easier to get it reattached.”

Lincoln laughs.

 

***

 

Lincoln’s Welcome Home party is more of a gathering than anything else. There’s Christmas carols booming from the speakers in the corner of the living room, green and red lights hanging off the edge of the roof, a garland running up the railing on the stairs, pine-green flecked with silver. And there is the real live tree, all ten feet of blue-green cypress, fresh from the farmer’s market and still glittering with dew, in the corner of the living room.

The tree was bare as it came when Lincoln stepped into the cabin, to the sounds of paper whistles blowing and Nick’s joyous laughter spreading like a wildfire through the room. Now, the men and Ella, from the vantage point of Peter’s shoulders (“Look, aunt Liv, I’m a giant!”), have taken to hanging two entire boxes of Christmas ornaments that Nick has collected over the years on its boughs.

Walter has made it a point to teach Astrid to cook saltwater taffy on the stove and Rachel stands looking on, riveted. Occasionally she steals a glance at her daughter to make sure she doesn’t abuse Peter’s back. Olivia would tell her sister she’s sure he can take it, that if it hurts he more or less deserves it, but that would give Rachel an opening to ask things Olivia doesn’t quite know the answers to, things Olivia doesn’t want to think about. So in lieu of saying anything, she refills her glass of wine and drinks deep.

The party is well on its mellow way when Rachel retires from the taffy making and the tree decorating and comes to sit by Olivia’s side on the couch, a wicked gleam in her eye that has the older sister preparing for a rehash of conversations best forgotten. Conversations she has been avoiding for a month, like everything else. Four weeks seems too short a time for the lifetimes Olivia feels she has lived since the Incident in November.

“Liv?”

Well there’s no avoiding this forever, she supposes. “Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

Rachel leans back on the couch, and gets a foot under her opposite thigh, refills her wineglass. “What really happened with John?”

Olivia sighs. “You’re not going to stop asking, are you?”

“Nope,” Rachel says, face determined despite the playful tone. “I told you everything about Greg. I told you every sordid detail about all the women he screwed behind my back, and you call me to tell me you divorced your husband, with whom everything appeared to be perfectly fine let me add, and you think you can leave it at that? I’ve been waiting for a month for you to explain things to me on your own time, but I haven’t heard a word about it since. And that’s not fair, so spill.”

Olivia lets her head fall back against the couch. “God, you may be my baby sister, but some days I don’t know why I love you.”

“Go on, Liv. I want _all_ the gory details.”

“I…he lied to me,” Olivia says. “In a big way.”

“Who was _he_ sleeping with?” Rachel leans forward, the beginnings of outrage showing in the tension of her temples, the thin slits of her eyes.

“Not like that. You remember the trial, before they threw me out of the FBI?”

“Of course. You cried about it. I don’t think I’d ever seen you cry before that. You never told me what it was about but you said they’d stolen some evidence you needed. What does that have to—no. Liv, did he have anything to do with that?”

“He stole it. He didn’t even destroy it afterwards, he kept it. I found it a few months ago, with his stuff.”

“What the fuck?” Rachel doesn’t ever curse. If Olivia weren’t in the middle of opening this can of worms, she’d jump. “Why?”

“They paid him.” Olivia smiles a bitter smile. There’s not a lot money can’t buy.

“That bastard,” Rachel seethes. “And he married you?”

“That’s what I said. I think I’m gonna need another drink.”

“Tell me something; was Peter revenge?”

And there it is. If intentions don’t matter, Olivia wonders, why is it that they seem to be all that people want to know about some things? “Rache…I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Oh, come on, when do we ever get to talk about your dirty laundry? It’s always been mine. It feels kind of comforting, actually.” Rachel looks almost giddy with the prospect and who is Olivia to deny her sister what little happiness she can give her?

She makes a show of considering the question, though she’s known the answer for some time. How many times did she ask herself that? She says, “No, it wasn’t revenge.”

“Then, why?”

“Because I wanted something that was mine. I wanted my secrets to be my own.” _And I did it because he wanted_ me.

“And you conveniently forgot to tell me all of this as it happened because?”

“I was going to tell you, just…at a better time.”

“You’re kind of a hypocrite.” Rachel shakes her head, laughter in her voice that the older sister can’t quite comprehend when attached to those words. “You always said you hated that I could date two guys at the same time.”

It’s funny because it’s true—at least that's how the saying goes. Olivia laughs, and feels infinitesimally lighter.

 

***

 

He’s brought back to consciousness by the flush of the toilet and the truck-horn snore of his father on the couch above him. Disoriented, he gets his eyes halfway open just in time to see Olivia’s moonlit silhouette approach the end of the coffee table by his feet and steal a heavy blanket from the pile on it. Unaware of his wakefulness or his eyes on her, she proceeds to put on jacket and boots and exit the cabin carefully, soundlessly, through the back door.

The next thing Peter hears, besides the ambient sounds of the wilderness and people sleeping, is the _tick, tick, tick_ , of the gas heater firing up and then the constant, dull roar of the gas that sounds, oddly enough, like uncapping a soda that’s been shaken too long.

When he turns his head in the direction she went, the shape of her becomes distinct out the window, sitting on the bench overlooking the yard. He gives her 10 minutes, then 20, then 30, all counter by the clock on the wall, and the neon glow of its minute hand. When the count hits 35, he gives up and stands.

The chill makes him shiver. He puts on long underwear and heavy pants and slips into his coat. Steps outside. Closing the door behind him so the freezing cold can’t get in, he leans back against the wall, looks to Olivia on the bench at his side. She spares him a short look and then goes back to staring at darkness.

“You okay?” Peter asks.

“Can't sleep,” she says, shrugging a shoulder, like this is ordinary for her. Hell, maybe it is. For all they shared a bed the past few months, there was never time for him to discover things like her strained relationship with sleep, or a possible penchant for late night hypothermia.

“No shit,” he says, rougher than he meant to. Peter sighs, rubs at his eyes. Softer, he adds, “You want company?”

“Go back to bed, Peter.” Her dismissal is quiet, just as soft as his question, but it’s a dismissal nonetheless.

He purses his lips at her, stares at what she stares, sees nothing there. Goes back inside but not to sleep. He pads to the kitchen, weight on the balls of his feet. Walter may be drugged to Sunday, but he has learnt that Nick sleeps light enough to be woken by a fallen pin and that he’s surly when the awakening is not of his choosing.

 The stove turns on without issue and the milk from the fridge steams in no time. He’s done this for himself so many times that he has the average number of minutes necessary to get milk pleasantly warm all but engraved in the back of his mind.

Peter hopes to god she’s not lactose intolerant or something.

“Here,” he says, when he gets back outside, mug in his outstretched hand. She looks at him and at the drink, and frowns at him. Again. It seems to be her expression of choice for him the last couple of days. Peter huffs. “Just take it.” The look turns stony and Peter licks his lips, almost wishes he had done as she said and gone back to bed. In his sleep what she wants is always clear. Sometimes, what she thinks of him is clear, too. “ _Please_ , take it?”

That does the trick. Olivia takes the mug from him without a word, stares at it. After a moment that seems longer that Peter rationally knows it is, she asks, amused, “Milk?”

Deciding that her compliance means she might not be averse to his company after all, Peter sits. “Trust me, it helps,” he says.

He doesn’t know what it is about the words but they make her look at him strangely, for a very long time. Measuring, waiting. Peter swallows hard.

Then she looks away, drinks the milk, and leaves him wondering.

After a number of minutes, and so low that he has to lean close to hear the words, Olivia says, “I trust you. I don't know why, and I’m not sure when it was that I chose to, but I trust you, whoever you are.” Self-deprecatingly, she adds, “It's just that I'm still not sure that I should.”

“I’m sorry.” It is all he thinks she might believe of him. And he means it.

“You've already said that.” After a moment, she sighs. “St. Louis...why did you come back?”

Ah. So that’s it. Would it have been easier for her, if he had stayed away? When Peter breathes next, he smells the pines and the firs beyond the fence, the stark smell of fresh snow and the earth underneath. It could be beautiful out there, with the stars so white against the night, with the silence made up of little animal sounds, and the wind, if Olivia couldn’t eclipse all of it with a look. He exhales slowly, measuring his breathing, and thinks, _congratulations, Bishop, you can’t get more pathetic than this_.

He could tell her, “Because I love my father just as much as I hate him,” and it would be part of the truth, but not the truth he needs her to hear. Not the truth that has him sitting here.

Instead, he says, “My mother killed herself.” He can feel her watching even as he looks away, can feel her sitting straighter, straining to hear his voice, which doesn’t rise above a whisper. If it goes any higher it will falter, and faltering will break him, and breaking is not for here, not for now. Some things are allowed to remain his. But not this, not this. “She loved me. She never knew how to tell me, but I knew. I knew because she was always with me, because as Walter drifted in and out of our lives, she was always there.

“She tried to protect me. From him. From herself, too, I guess. And then Walter was taken away, and she slaved over so many jobs just to keep me fed that she rarely ever saw me. I couldn't stand it. For the longest time I thought she was weak for missing him and I resented her because she couldn't look at me without thinking of him. She told me, every night, to be better than him, to take care of the people I cared about, and I didn’t listen. I told myself I was already better, that she just couldn’t see it because he was all she could see in me.

“I left Boston for the first time a week after my 18th birthday, never looked back. A couple of years later I got a call from St. Claire's, from Walter, saying my mother had died in a car accident. In 18 years that was the only time I ever spoke to him. Turns out he lied. When they found her in the kitchen floor of her apartment she was already dead—sleeping pills, they told me, and half a bottle of bourbon on an empty stomach...it occurred to me then, that it was his fault for leaving her, for making her suffer.” He makes himself look at her then, matches the bottomless green of her stare. “It was only later that I realized I had done the same. And that she was right in comparing.” With a shaky breath, he says, “I don't want Walter to be what kills you.”

“I’m not going to die.” She shakes her head, smiles, looking for all the world like she knows all the secrets he doesn’t dare think about. “Not just yet anyway.”

“But you might.” Peter takes her hand on impulse, not violently but unexpectedly, folds her pale, cold fingers into the heat of his. Touch, he reasons, has not yet failed him. Not with her, and not in this. “Without me here, you might. And it's not because I can protect you from anything you can't handle yourself, it's...look, Walter...Walter doesn't care about a lot of things, but he cares about me. It's not something I can change, even if most days I'd rather he didn't. He cares about me, and I care about you. And he knows that. I think...so long as I'm here, I can keep the damage to a minimum.”

 “It suits you.”

“Caring?” He gives a short laugh, and a bitter one. Lets himself look away. Runs his other set of fingers through the edge of his beard, scratches at the skin beneath. “Hardly. I’m shit at it.”

But Olivia shakes her head at the fuzzy edge of his vision. It is not what she meant. “Honesty,” she corrects. “You should try it more often.”

She doesn’t drop his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yes, I am a bit unhinged. This story is more of a fusion. You will not see any of the characters from AG or Twin Peaks, and I'm sorry for that, but I can only juggle so many people in a story right now. 
> 
> The title of this story is taken shamelessly from the poem by Richard Siken with the same name. 
> 
> This would not have been possible without my beta, and the people still reading it who didn't know I was posting today (I didn't know I was posting today) *cough'rithcough*


End file.
